


Paradise Built

by Vigs



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: But we're gonna fix that, Discussion of Pregnancy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Getting Together, God is bad, Heaven is bad, Hell is bad, M/M, Multi, Other, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, With apologies to Milton, discussion of sex work, healing from abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-07-27 15:04:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20048020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vigs/pseuds/Vigs
Summary: The forces of Heaven and Hell have been exiled from the Earth, except for Aziraphale and Crowley. Now there's nothing stopping them from being together... unless you count Crowley's past trauma, Aziraphale's millennia of conditioning, the Antichrist needing their help to find his birth mum, Crowley's naked ex-girlfriend, Anathema demanding that someone do something about the terrible state of the afterlife, and the ever-vigilant eye of God. A Good Omens sequel featuring several original characters, a sprinkling of smut, attempts at humor, quite possibly too many footnotes, and even more sacrilege than the original.





	1. In Which Odd Events Occur

**Author's Note:**

> This story primarily takes its cues from the book version of Good Omens, although I’m basically incapable of seeing Crowley as anything other than David Tennant’s fabulous portrayal of him now. (Michael Sheen was also brilliant, but I’ve always seen Aziraphale as a POC, and the book version of him has a bit more… bite, I suppose. So this Aziraphale is influenced by Sheen’s, but isn’t just outright him.) For anyone who hasn’t read the book, the most relevant differences are:  
-Armageddon happened in 1989. (A lot of people say 1990, because that's when the book came out, but I like it better as the year when a Certain Historical Event mentioned in this chapter occurred.)  
-The bit at the end where Aziraphale and Crowley switched bodies never happened. (Wasn’t there a fic where that happened? I could have sworn I read fic of that ages before the show came out.)  
-Adam and his group of friends are referred to as “the Them” once in the show, I think, but it’s easy to miss. I use the term a lot here. The Youngs also had an older child named Sarah who is barely mentioned even in the book.  
-Aziraphale and Crowley don’t do all of the influencing Warlock personally; Aziraphale mentions having a “little team.”  
-I loved Frances McDormand as God and how beautifully gender-diverse Heaven was in the show, but in this story most angels are more-or-less male-presenting and God gets male pronouns--not because I dislike gender diversity, but because I dislike Heaven (and most mainstream religions' views on gender diversity).  
-Madame Tracy’s real name is Marjory Potts.  
-Crowley wears snakeskin shoes… probably.
> 
> Anything else is either stolen shamelessly from Milton, making fun of C.S. Lewis, or of my own invention.

The months following the end of the world were particularly odd, odd enough to help everyone get on with forgetting about the extremely strange preceding week. Tadfield saw a string of rainy days—not thrilling thunderstorms or cleansing showers that passed in the night and left everything sparkling and new in the morning, but a dull, grey sort of all-day drizzle that hadn’t been seen there in years. On the seventh day of it, Adam Young looked glumly out his window and realized that not interfering in the big things like weather patterns (now that he realized he was doing it) really wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Berlin saw a great number of people realize that, hang on, why should they let a bunch of rude out-of-towners with guns and a wall tell them where they were allowed to go in their own city? Said out-of-towners realized that standing about in a foreign country telling people where they could and couldn’t go wasn’t such a good job after all, especially since when you got right down to it they were very much outnumbered, and what were they going to do, shoot them all? Somehow that didn’t feel like a real option any more. War screamed in frustration, but as she was only the inkling of a thought spread through the backs of billions of minds, no one heard her. The gates were opened by November.

Anathema Device saw an unexpected delay in her period, but attributed it to stress. Nothing of the kind had ever happened before, but then, she’d never experienced that kind of stress before. She avoided thinking about the fact that her foolproof ancestral method for determining pregnancy, “just check the book,” was no longer available to her, or the fact that even someone as meticulous as she could hardly be expected to bother with a rubber at the end of the world. She very much hoped it was just stress, because without the adrenaline rush of saving the world together, she and Newt were finding that they actually had very little in common.

Crowley and Aziraphale saw nothing at all. Well, they did see each other rather a lot; there was something very comforting, after everything that had happened, about the things that didn't change. Though their corporations hadn't stayed consistent over the years, Aziraphale had the same sky-blue eyes and earth-brown skin since the very beginning, and Crowley’s tall, lanky build and slitted yellow eyes were just as old1. They saw St. James Park every week, and the Ritz nearly as often, and their own miraculously (anti-miraculously? There weren’t really words for what Adam was or did) restored belongings every day, but they neither saw nor heard a thing from either Heaven or Hell, and that was even odder than that business in Berlin.

“Perhaps they’re pretending it never happened?” Aziraphale suggested over tea at Crowley’s flat. He didn’t particularly like being in Crowley’s flat—the stark minimalism of the place reminded him queasily of Heaven, and the feeling of terror emanating from the houseplants felt like how he imagined the Other Place would feel2— but not a week earlier Crowley had spilled some wine on the manuscript that Anathema, unable to bear actually destroying it, had given to Adam, who hadn’t read a word of it (he had quite enough Power to deal with without adding foreknowledge to it, thanks, and having the book would’ve meant homework besides) and had sent it to Aziraphale. The angel had miracled off the stains, of course, but it was the principle of the thing, and since all of their get-togethers inevitably involved the consumption of some form of liquid, he’d insisted that they meet at Crowley’s for the foreseeable future3.

“If they were pretending it had never happened, we would’ve heard _ something _,” Crowley insisted, lounging in his chair in a manner that Aziraphale was quite certain an actual human couldn’t imitate. “Even if they decided not to recall us, they’d tell us what we were supposed to be doing.”

Crowley had spent the first two weeks of the rest of their lives dithering over whether sending in his timecards4 would keep them off his back or just remind them that he existed, but when he finally lit them on fire as per some particularly melodramatic and anachronistic regulations, they didn’t go anywhere. They just smouldered.

“I didn’t have much luck when I tried to contact some friends Up There—just to see how things were getting on, you know,” Aziraphale conceded. Mostly, he’d been trying not to think about the possibility of repercussions—they’d saved the world, and he’d earned a break—but this conversation was bringing the little ball of terror he’d been carrying around into the forefront of his mind, effectively canceling out the warm glow of the two bottles of wine they’d shared. He was sitting with his back ramrod-straight, because trying to lounge when he was around Crowley, whose spine seemed to be made of ball bearings, gave him the strangest feeling of inadequacy. He couldn’t deal with that and worry about Heaven at the same time. “Or, well, any luck at all, I suppose.”

“_ He _ can’t have just—gotten rid of them, could He?” Crowley asked hopefully.

“Oh, come now,” Aziraphale said, trying to laugh off the suggestion. “Adam could’ve unmade _ us _, certainly, but he hardly could’ve erased the Metatron, or Gabriel, or—”

“Not _ him _,” Crowley said impatiently. “I mean, you know, Him. The original Mr. Capitalize-All-My-Pronouns. The Big Guy.” Demons avoided the Lord’s name the way humans avoided putting flatware in electrical outlets: a few of them did it once, but none of them did it twice.

Aziraphale paled.

“Surely not,” he said. He might not always see eye-to-eye with the Host on everything, but for them to be just _ gone _, erased on some ineffable whim, was unthinkable. “He wouldn’t just—wouldn’t just—well, at the very least, He certainly wouldn’t have overlooked the two of us, my dear.”

“I’m not sure anyone can say what He would or wouldn’t do, at this point,” Crowley said. He rather liked the idea of being the only demon, particularly if Aziraphale was the only angel as well.

“I haven’t even been able to reach Francis,” Aziraphale protested. “He wouldn’t have gotten rid of the souls of the righteous dead.”

“Probably not,” Crowley allowed. “He always did like humanity better.” This was a bit of a party line—the whole Rebellion had been about this favoritism, when you got right down to it—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

Aziraphale pursed his lips as though holding back words, although Crowley couldn’t have said whether it was disagreement or agreement that he was keeping himself from voicing. He wondered if the angel even knew.

“At any rate,” Crowley continued hastily, “It seems like something odd is happening in both directions, and I'm sure it's going to come down on both our heads at some point.”

“Assuming that's true, what do you propose we do about it?” Aziraphale asked, a bit too sharply in Crowley’s opinion.

“Suppose we could ask Adam for asylum,” Crowley suggested. He didn’t exactly _ like _ the idea of approaching the preteen Antichrist, but there wasn’t a lot he wouldn’t do to stay on Earth.

“What if he said no? _ You _ remember what he said about messing people about,” Aziraphale said. “We've both done rather a lot of that.”

It was the sort of understatement that only an immortal could really make. Crowley, after all, had been the original messer-about. This had previously been a point of pride for him. Aziraphale hadn't quite had that head start, but he'd been the one to hand Eve the sword, and he’d kept pace with Crowley ever since.

“Suppose we just don't do any more of it,” Crowley said. “Just until we know what's happened.”

“I haven't really been doing much,” Aziraphale said. “Not since it happened.”

“Can't get us in any more trouble, really,” Crowley said. “Can't go against orders when we haven't gotten any.”

“You haven't been wiling?” Aziraphale asked.

“Not substantially.”

“Nothing for me to thwart, then,” Aziraphale concluded. “Heaven can't object as long as I keep practicing Virtue on a personal scale, and Adam wouldn’t mind that, I shouldn't think.”

“Good thinking,” Crowley said with a grin. “You can practice Temperance and Diligence and all that rot, and I'll hold down Gluttony and Sloth. Hang on, I'll get started.” He got up to retrieve a third bottle of wine, this time a Tempranillo that he knew Aziraphale was partial to, and wondered how the angel would justify joining him.

“Ah, well, it would hardly be Kind for me to let you drink alone,” Aziraphale said, sure enough.

“I don't know, sharing might be too Charitable for me,” Crowley said thoughtfully. “Need to avoid that sort of thing.”

“Oh, shut up and pour,” said Aziraphale, trying to convince himself that he was showing Diligence and not just desperate for a drink.

Several bottles later, Crowley had migrated to the couch and Aziraphale had forgotten his lounge envy. The two leaned against each other on the couch, bickering comfortably. The bickering was habitual; the physical contact was new. They'd touched only sparingly before the Apocalypse5 but there was something about preparing to face down Satan together that dissolved barriers. The first time they drank together after the end of the world, they'd actually come to consciousness in a tangled heap of limbs beneath the table in Aziraphale’s back room. It hadn't been nearly as awkward as it should have been.

Leaning against one another didn't feel awkward in the slightest. In fact, it seemed to steady Aziraphale’s nerves even more than the alcohol. It was strange, he thought; he really very rarely _ touched _ anyone. Heaven was hardly a physical-contact sort of place, and aside from perhaps a handshake here or touching someone to deliver a blessing, he rarely touched on Earth. He was very aware of every point at which Crowley’s body was in contact with his, filling him with a tingling warmth that didn’t feel in the least like either God’s love or Hellfire.

“You can't seriously tell me the Virtues are more fun than the Sins,” Crowley insisted, dragging Aziraphale’s attention back to the conversation. “Fun’s the whole point of sinning.”

“Not always more _ fun _ , exactly,” Aziraphale allowed, “but _ better _ feeling. You can't tell me Wrath’s fun, my dear. Or Envy, how is Envy fun?”

“Anything’s more fun than _ Temperance,” _Crowley said. “Or Chastity. Those practically mean not having fun.”

“No stomachache, with Temperance,” Aziraphale said. “And no mess, with Chastity.”

“Mess!” Crowley laughed. “Ask around, angel. The consensus is pretty clear. The fun’s worth the mess.”

Aziraphale laughed.

“If it's all the same to you, I don't think I shall,” he said. “Can you imagine? ‘Excuse me, sir, but do you think the mess is really worth…’” He dissolved into giggles.

“There's that adult bookstore next to your shop,” Crowley said, feigning contemplation. “You could consult the experts.”

Then they were both laughing at the mental image of Aziraphale putting polite inquiries to the owner of said bookstore. Crowley realized he’d never done that before, just leaned against someone and laughed until there were tears in his eyes. It didn't seem like something that was covered under any of the Sins _ or _ the Virtues, which was a bit strange, because really it was more fun than any of them. Any that he'd tried, anyway; he didn’t think he’d done all the Virtues. Maybe Humility really was a rollicking good time.

“Does asking for help count as Humility?” He asked Aziraphale when they'd both mostly finished laughing.

“Depends how you mean it, I should think,” Aziraphale said. “It wouldn't count if you were just trying to get out of work or something, but if you're truly acknowledging that you need help, probably. Why?”

“Huh,” Crowley said. “Suppose I have tried them all, then.” Of course, the only person he'd asked for help in a way that counted was Aziraphale, but that probably meant it counted double, like how Lust counted double when someone Lusted after a demon. Good times, he thought fondly.

“Well, it's only fourteen things,” Aziraphale pointed out. “And we've had six thousand years to try them all.”

“We?” Crowley asked. He would have leered, but he was currently leaning his head against Azirapale’s remarkably comfortable shoulder and didn’t feel like getting up. “You’ve tried them all too, have you? Even the _ messy _ ones?”

“Well.” Aziraphale flushed, and was grateful that Crowley wasn’t in a position to notice. “That one would be harder to do by accident, for one of us. So much effort, even if you don’t, er, see it through to the messy part.”

Crowley hummed in agreement. It _ was _ rather an effort, and he’d certainly had entire centuries where he didn’t bother, which was why he’d given himself credit for Chastity, but it was good fun and it kept Hell off his back, even if he bent the rules a bit. He knew he ought to go for partners who were more uncertain about what they were doing, who were cheating on their spouses or breaking some sort of vow or at least conflicted about their orientations, but he’d found it was much more fun with the people he found in every century, all the way back to Lilith at the very beginning, who had a curious sort of rock-solid certainty that their bodies were their own and that what they did with them was nobody else’s business 6. When it looked like he’d be fucking someone regularly for a while he made a point of letting them know exactly what they were taking to bed (in order to get them that double-sin for Lusting after a demon, of course), but people of that sort didn’t seem to get too troubled by it. Presumably that meant they were bound for Hell before they even met him. He didn’t like to check.

He did not mention these thoughts to Aziraphale. It wasn’t until after the angel had sobered up and gone home that Crowley realized he’d never actually gotten a straight answer to his question.

Lilith was bored.

This was perhaps the _ least _ odd thing to occur in those weeks, since it had been the case, with only brief exceptions, for very nearly six thousand years now. She'd tried just about everything; sex and motherhood and sex and should-have-been-lethal quantities of recreational drugs and sex and self-mutilation and sex and anything else she could think of, and it was all interesting for a while, but it didn't take long for it all to feel as old as she was.

Not that she looked it. Her vaguely Persian-featured face was unlined and her figure unbowed by age, although something undefinable about her eyes and her facial expressions tended to make people assume she was in her late thirties but very skilled with cosmetics, although actually she rarely bothered with them. If she was going to make art, she’d rather do it somewhere that would be more convenient for her to look at, instead of somewhere that would require a mirror and might smudge if she ate or slept.

Few other Earth-based entities were as old as Lilith, and she’d had sex with most of them. Crowley had been her first, and probably her most frequent, but most demons who spent a substantial amount of time on Earth would run into (or seek out) Lilith. Even Satan had popped up to visit her a time or two. She was happy enough to participate; they were more interesting than humans. Angels seemed to turn and go the other way if they saw her coming7.

But there were others who had walked the Earth for a few thousand years, and four of the five of them had also found their way through Lilith’s bed. Death couldn’t touch her, and likely had neither the time nor the inclination to do so even if he could, but the other Horsepeople were among her favorite partners.

Pestilence was her very favorite, in fact. While he was inside her, he made her feel things she never felt elsewhere: fevers and chills, boils and aches, shivering and withering and breaking down inside. He told her he liked the way she clenched around him when she coughed or retched. It all healed as soon as they’d finished, of course, but it was certainly intense and novel while it lasted. They’d spent the summer of 1936 together in the States8 after he retired, before drifting apart again. They still ran into each other every now and then, but these days he always talked her ear off about how very well his solo career was going; smaller venues, perhaps, but he could still knock ‘em dead.

War and Pollution...well, she could take them or leave them. She always had to have _ such _ a bath after Pollution, and War was both creative and intense, but she always did insist on the same sort of ambiance. As far as Lilith was concerned, once you’ve heard the sound one creature makes as bits of it are removed or destroyed you’ve heard them all, but that sort of thing was always happening around War.

Famine, though, he was nearly as good as Pestilence. For one thing, the actual sex got a bit more varied and interesting than just “turn your head and cough”; for another, he was the only thing that could create such an emptiness in her, a desperate need to be filled. An energetic round of sex with Famine followed by a full meal was decadent pleasure _ non pareil _.

Of course, she generally had to conjure the food herself, since good food tended not to last long around Famine, but she was a witch—_ the _ Witch, one might say, the first human to harness magic—so that wasn’t much of an obstacle.

Magic came naturally to Lilith, largely because she had no concept of communication. As far as she was concerned, there were incantations to make people stay, incantations to make them leave, incantations to make them take their clothes off and incantations to make them put them on. “Please stay,” “let’s shag,” and “go away” might be considerably simpler than the assemblage of sigils and invocations necessary to summon a feast, but to her they were basically the same.

Anyone whose presence she couldn’t currently sense was about equally nonexistent to Lilith, but she was more than intelligent enough to notice patterns in how long it would generally take them to pop back into the bubble of reality that surrounded her. Famine had broken the pattern quite suddenly some weeks ago, after which some very odd things had happened. She had actually sailed halfway to Atlantis before it disappeared again, after which she couldn’t seem to get information about it anywhere, which was disappointing. She hadn’t been anywhere really _ new _ in quite a long time.

She turned the sailboat northwards, summoning a favourable wind. Perhaps she would sail north until the sea turned into ice, and then see how long she could stand naked on a glacier before her limbs stopped working. If she didn’t time things right and position her protective runes correctly, she could actually be in danger of being stuck there for a while. Real danger--now that would be a thrill.

And perhaps she’d stop by Britain on her way north. Her odds of encountering Crowley would increase significantly if she was there, based on the best information she had, and—well. You never really got over your first, did you.

  1. Although of course the sunglasses were a relatively new addition, and he'd only started favouring white skin after the advent of institutionalized racism, since it made his job considerably easier. This was the same reason he'd always deliberately aimed to be seen as male, whereas Aziraphale, like most angels, was satisfied to show humans a figure with no secondary sex characteristics, aggressively genderless clothing, and a commanding presence and let them draw their own conclusions. No one had failed to assume he was male until he’d moved to Soho, which Crowley found hilarious for reasons he wouldn’t explain and Aziraphale pretended not to understand. [ ▲ ]
  2. Aziraphale always wanted to help the poor dears, but he assumed that they kept Crowley from getting homesick, so he restrained himself to keeping an eye on Crowley’s rubbish bins and miracling any plants he found there off to their native habitats, or occasionally to a pot on the windowsill of a pensioner who really needed something to take care of. If Crowley had known the angel thought that the psychic signature of a few scared plants (which didn’t even have nervous systems, let alone souls) was even slightly reminiscent of Hell, he would’ve laughed himself sick. If he had been told the actual fate of his discarded houseplants, he would have vowed to get even and then carried on as usual, because he already knew. [ ▲ ]
  3. Which, given Aziraphale’s possession of said manuscript, was likely to be a formidable length of time. [ ▲ ]
  4. An entirely human invention. Crowley had taken credit for it, but was extremely envious nonetheless. [ ▲ ]
  5. Or rather, between the Arrangement and the Apocalypse. Before the Arrangement, they tended to come into physical contact with some regularity, but it involved fists and fangs and discorporation, not sitting on a sofa together. [ ▲ ]
  6. They were wrong, of course; it was the Lord’s business, or at least, Heaven considered it to be so. The body was less of a gift from God and more of a lease, with rather specific terms on how it was intended to be used. The people Crowley slept with were quite emphatically, and enthusiastically, voiding the warranty. [ ▲ ]
  7. Lilith didn’t contemplate their motivation for doing so—indeed, she was constitutionally incapable of such thoughts—but the truth was that she didn’t quite fit in with their worldview. She was a human who had fallen from Grace, but not in the usual way and not in a way that made her mortal; no one seemed to be sure whether she was redeemable, and her blatant sexual propositions made them uncomfortable. Most of them preferred to simply ignore her existence. [ ▲ ]
  8. This coincided with the most intense and deadly heat wave in American history. Heatstroke may not precisely be a _plague_, but it does still fall under his purview, and penicillin is entirely ineffective against it. The death toll and the sex both cheered him immensely. [ ▲ ]


	2. In Which There Are A Number Of Significant Telephone Calls

Hell was not creative. The last truly novel concept they had embraced was Rebellion, and seeing where that had landed them, they’d given up on creation at the same time that they’d given up on Creation.

When it was time for the Antichrist to be conceived, they had therefore fallen on their habitually uncreative default: whatever Heaven had done, Hell would do the opposite. They did everything they could to make the Antichrist’s conception and birth the opposite of J—er, the anti-Antichrist’s conception. This was fairly easy to do, since the Opposition had considerately written the whole thing down.

An outside observer might have said that they took this “opposites” thing too far, particularly the bit where they teleported their anti-Mary to a ship in the middle of the Pacific (directly globally opposite Bethlehem) to give birth, but they took it quite seriously.

They decided that the conception would be an act of earthly sin instead of whatever miraculous ghostly visitation nonsense the other side had done, that a black hole would appear in the sky to mark the occasion instead of a star (all to the better if no one noticed, really), and that rather than a married virgin, their anti-Mary would be an unmarried whore.

When it was time to make the selection, Evelyn Sage Miller happened to turn up in one of their Earth-based agents’ reports1, and they quickly found that she had several points to recommend her. Their attention was originally captured by the fact that at the time, her friends called her “Eve,” but on top of that, she was an atheist, a sex worker (the demons said “whore,” but fortunately for them, none of them said it to her face), and similar-enough looking to the American Cultural Attaché they’d chosen to raise the Antichrist that there shouldn’t be any trouble with the switch. Demons could occasionally be practical, when it was important, and this was the most important anything had been since the Temptation2.

Evelyn herself was unaware of any of this. Some of the Archdemons had suggested that one of them should appear to their anti-Mary to let her know that curséd was she amongst women, but it was decided that actually, the opposite of an angel appearing to give notice was to make sure she never even found out what had happened. Atheists could be a bit tricky, after all. They were solidly Hell-bound, no doubt about it, but for some reason any time a demon tried to tell one what to do, they tended to either check themselves into psychiatric hospitals or defect to Heaven, which was extremely inconvenient.

So Evelyn only noticed two unusual things while the deed was being done: first, that her client had exceptionally dark, almost hypnotic eyes, and second, that the condom broke. It wasn’t apparent at the time that the Pill had also failed her. When she realized she was pregnant, she tried to get an abortion, but somehow it didn’t take, and somehow she didn’t try again.

She’d been rather too distracted by the process of giving birth to notice being instantly transported to a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at the time, and later, her memories of having been pregnant and given the baby up for adoption faded away completely.

Then, as everyone’s memories of fish falling and Atlantis rising had left them, her memories of her pregnancy had returned.

It was rather alarming to realize, a decade after the fact, that she’d given birth. A month ago she would have sworn that she never had (and never would). She still couldn’t remember some important details, like the name of the adoption agency. She couldn’t even remember setting it up, just having a sourceless sense of assurance that everything was taken care of.

She couldn't remember forgetting, but she certainly did remember having forgotten. She remembered complaining, a year or so after the event, about a client who had insisted that her stretch marks meant she must have been pregnant—in fact, she remembered complaining about it to someone she'd been friends with during her pregnancy, but the friend had just nodded sympathetically and shared his own unreasonable-client story.

She'd worked while she was pregnant, right up until she started to really show, and then she'd stopped until after she gave birth. What had she done for money, during those months? She couldn't remember. It had just… been there.

It occurred to her that she might have sold her baby on the black market. She'd heard of that, a clandestine trade for infertile couples who didn't want to have to wait for their bundle of joy to move through legitimate channels. Surely she would remember having set that up, though. Surely she would remember selling her baby. At the very least, she would remember thinking about her baby.

Her baby. Her son. She had brought a child into the world, and then she had misplaced him. She remembered going to hospital, and she remembered (how the hell had she forgotten?) giving birth, and she thought she remembered waking up in her own bed, neither concerned nor pregnant.

But she had definitely been in a hospital, and she had definitely already been living in Soho then. They had to give you your own medical records if you asked, right? That would at least give her something to go on.

Evelyn began placing calls.  


Only a few blocks away3, Aziraphale was reading.

_ Further Nife and Accurate Prophecies _ contained a great deal of useful information. The angel had quite enjoyed puzzling it out, not least because it reassured him that the world would continue to be around for a good long while.

Agnes had known, of course, that Newt and Anathema would give the book away. One of the earlier pages contained what was not so much a prophecy as a threat concerning what would happen if Aziraphale did not return the book when it was requested back, although she seemed to have intentionally obfuscated the identity of the asker. It would certainly be either Anathema herself or someone descended from her, which explained why most of the prophecies were clearly intended to benefit and protect her family.

Aziraphale found this rather sweet, but it wasn’t what he was looking for. Nor was the information which he’d noticed, in a disapproving sort of way, could probably make him quite a lot of money if he asked Crowley what a “stocks” was and where exactly one could find the market for them5.

What he was looking for was any mention of angels or demons. Aside from the admonition to himself, he found nothing comprehensible. There were a few mentions of what seemed to be occult or ethereal beings, but they weren’t even specific enough for him to know which. He reread the most confusing of these.

“Like Wingges of Swannes sharl they remayne in Shappe, yet Coloure sharl spreade where theyr was Nonne,” he muttered to himself, as if it would make any more sense out loud than on the page. Angelic and demonic wings were shaped rather like swan wings, he supposed, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of the bit about colour, which probably meant that it was the important part.

Angel wings came in shades of white, from cotton to paper to snow and beyond into blinding purity that had no earthly equivalent; demonic wings were the opposite, from dark grey to night black and past it. Aziraphale’s were a warmish cream shade, Crowley’s a slightly iridescent black that matched the scales of his back when he was in snake form.

Aziraphale’s phone rang. He jumped at the noise, then glared at it resentfully and put the manuscript down with reluctance. It wasn’t as if the rest of that prophecy made any more sense, after all. He could spare a moment to scare away whoever was calling, unless it was Crowley, in which case he could spare an evening.

“Hullo, Aziraphale,” said a very young voice on the other end.

If Aziraphale was a human, he probably would have forgotten to breathe. As it was, he forgot to continue beating his heart, which wouldn’t do him any harm but would turn his fingers and toes funny colours if he kept it up for too long.

“Adam,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level. “Is everything alright?”

Perhaps they wouldn’t have to ask for amnesty after all. Perhaps it would be offered to them. Or perhaps the world was ending again. There weren’t a lot of reasons he could think of for the Antichrist to call.

“Everything’s fine,” Adam said. “I was just wondering, d’you know a Malkiel? Only I’ve been keeping all the angels and demons off Earth for a while, ‘cept you and Crowley, but there’s an angel named Malkiel who actually asked if she could talk to you, polite-like. The rest of the ones who’ve tried to get through haven’t asked. So I thought I’d see if you wanted to talk to her.”

Aziraphale digested this information for a moment. He supposed it would explain why there hadn’t been a word from Heaven or Hell lately, although it did raise the equally serious question of why he and Crowley had been allowed to stay, and whether that privilege would be revoked any time soon.

“I know her, yes,” he said when he found his voice. “You can let her through.”

“Kay, but tell her I’m not going to do this all the time,” Adam said. His voice was both impressively stern for an eleven-year-old and laughably unintimidating, given what he was actually capable of. “Got things to do, y’know.”

“I’ll let her know,” Aziraphale said. Oh dear, would that count as taking orders from the Antichrist? He fervently hoped not. Politeness, at least, they couldn’t hold against him, so he added, “Thank you.”

“Welcome,” Adam said, and hung up.

There was a sound behind Aziraphale that suggested that space and time were a pair of cheap nylons which had just developed a run. He whirled around and found Malkiel standing behind him, wearing a white skirtsuit and a disoriented expression. She was a Cherub, so he could also faintly make out her true form, all wheels and wings and eyes, but it was hidden the same way that his wings were. They’d met back when she was guarding the southern gate of Eden6, although she hadn’t spent a lot of time on Earth since then.

“That little brat,” she snapped. “I wasn’t even trying to get through just then. He just _ sent _ me.”

“Hello, Malkiel,” Aziraphale said, attempting a smile. “How are things?” The two weren’t exactly close, but he considered her a friend. Both of them were considered rather eccentric by the heavenly Host, Aziraphale for his preoccupation with the Earth, Malkiel for insisting that she be referred to using female pronouns and so on. Angels were (generally) sexless, so it wasn’t as if referring to them as male made any more sense; it was just sort of the default, for reasons that most of the Host didn’t care to question, and so while her strange request was honoured, it didn’t exactly endear her to the rest. Aziraphale was more attached to his identity as male than he probably ought to be (and a specific type of male, at that), so he could sympathize to some measure.

“It’s a bit of a mess up there,” she said. “You know I was never quite as attached to Earth as you, but everyone being stuck in Heaven is rubbish. One can’t even properly spread one’s wings without smacking them into somebody.”

Aziraphale knew this was a bit of an exaggeration—Heaven was technically infinite—but since angels generally stuck to the good bits where you could keep an eye on the Earth and there weren’t quite so many dead humans, there was likely some truth to it.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said diplomatically. “Unfortunately, Adam told me to tell you&mdash”

“That this was a one-time exception, I know,” she interrupted. “I was watching. Most of us were, I think. There hasn’t been much to do lately but keep an eye on you and Adam, you know.”

Aziraphale paled at this. Most of what he’d been doing lately had been either reading books or drinking with Crowley. He dreaded the idea of being summoned back to Heaven for some sort of hearing, or even punishment, and wondered if Adam would let him return after.

“So, well.” Malkiel hesitated. “You’ve Fallen, of course.”

Aziraphale’s heart had already stopped beating, but this required some sort of physical response. His body decided, entirely without his permission, that it should sit on the floor now.

“I can’t have,” he said, gaping at Malkiel in horror. “I—I would have _ noticed _.”

“I convinced them to extend God’s grace to you until I could tell you in person,” she said gently. “In light of your past service, you know. Decent of them, I thought.”

“Quite,” Aziraphale said shakily. His lips were numb. Perhaps it had already started. Perhaps this was how Falling went; first your legs forgot how to stand, then your lips went numb. He wished he’d asked Crowley. They talked about everything else, but the Fall had always stayed off-limits.

“I did try to argue your case,” Malkiel said. “Perhaps if it had been a first offence, but they do still remember your little switch-up with Isaac and the ram7, and you got Earth cut off from Heaven, and just about all you’ve done this past month has been fraternize with a demon, so…”

They’d been _ watching _. Aziraphale pictured Gabriel and Uriel and maybe even the bloody Metatron standing around a window to the Earth, watching him and shaking their heads disapprovingly. Watching him get drunk with a demon, watching him and Crowley joke about Sin and Virtue like they meant nothing...

He’d always known that Heaven could see anything, but over the millenia he’d become complacent with the knowledge that they usually didn’t bother. How had it not occurred to him that they’d bother now?

“I’m sure it won’t be, er, as bad as it could be,” Malkiel said. “You already have friends on the other side, and all.”

“Isn’t there anything…” Aziraphale flailed mentally. “I got Hell cut off from Earth too. That must mean something.”

“I did try bringing that up,” she assured him. “But everyone still remembers last time the only demon on Earth was the Serpent, you know. And the Antichrist may not exactly be one of theirs, but he’s certainly closer to them than to us.”

Aziraphale nodded, feeling faint.

“Is everyone else alright?” he asked. “I’m the only one Falling?” Francis had helped him with Warlock8…

“Just you,” Malkiel confirmed.

At least he’d managed not to take anyone else with him, then. That was something.

“Aziraphale, I’m…” She trailed off. “It’s…”

She couldn’t say that she disagreed with him Falling, he knew. Not if she didn’t want to join him.

“I know,” he said. “It’s all right. Has it started yet?”

“Not until I leave,” she said. “Which I need to do.”

“If you could stay just a moment…” Aziraphale stood up and edged towards the phone.

“I can’t, Aziraphale,” she said. “Not if you’re going to call the Serpent or the Antichrist, I can’t help you do that.”

“Don’t help, then,” Aziraphale said, and lunged for it.

“You tricked me!” Malkiel said loudly—but she didn’t leave. “I didn’t want to accept it, but now I see the Serpent’s touch on you! How could you betray us so?”

She didn’t dematerialize until he’d finished dialing.

Her absence hit him like--no, not her absence, he realized. _ God’s _ absence hit him like a punch to the gut with a fist made of acid. He barely managed to hang on through the agonizing seconds that the phone rang.

“Hallo?” Crowley said, tinny and distant. The whole world seemed to be getting a bit tinny and distant.

“Falling,” Aziraphale croaked. He was too busy falling to the floor, and Falling, to say anything else.

  1. Form 7-L-289-C, to be precise; Lust, simultaneously inspiring and indulging, heterosexual, non-adulterous, no mind control or other substantial force involved. [ ▲ ]
  2. Not the first, highly-successful one with the apple, but the second one, involving a certain carpenter in the desert. Crowley had used up the very last of the cachet he’d earned in the Garden when he bungled that one. [ ▲ ]
  3. It may seem odd that an angel would reside in a district that was infamous for sex work and homosexuality—certainly Crowley thought it was hilarious—but the truth was that Aziraphale had always been most comfortable, when around humans, in the company of men who, well, preferred the company of other men (at least in times and places where that was seen as a meaningfully distinct category.) Human men tended to be unpleasant; bullies, even. They had invented entire words to justify it to themselves, manliness and machismo and macho, but really it was just unpleasant. Human women were better, but Aziraphale was quite attached to being seen as male, and so he was always a man among women, which wasn't fair on them because he couldn't prove right off that he wasn't one of the bullies, so they were justifiably cautious if he tried to socialize with them. Gay men4 allowed themselves, and each other, to be gentle and affectionate. Aziraphale felt at home with them, and went out of his way (sometimes 100 guineas out of his way) to seek out their company. He justified this to himself with the logic that all humans were sinners, so he may as well spend time with the sinners whose company he found the most enjoyable, although even he was aware that this was more of a rationalization than a logical reason. He was prepared to tell his superiors, should they ever question the company he kept, that he was "ministering" to them, but none of them ever did. [ ▲ ]
  4. As they were termed this century; other times had called them "inverts" or "similsexuals" or even "sodomites," although it should have been clear enough even to humans that a city populated only by gay men would have had enough difficulty keeping up its population that no outside interference would have been necessary to destroy it. [ ▲ ]
  5. It was important to notice these sorts of temptations, both because you couldn’t resist what you didn’t notice and because sometimes the ends justified the means. The ends, in this case, were noticeably book-shaped. [ ▲ ]
  6. Aziraphale had been a Cherub as well back then, before his flaming-sword-related demotion. He still missed his wheels-within-wheels on occasion; his true form now was simply his human-shaped corporation plus wings. [ ▲ ]
  7. Aziraphale had just barely managed to talk his way out of serious punishment for that one by arguing that as Abraham had already shown his willingness to kill his own son, there was no reason he had to actually go through with it. He had never understood why the willingness to kill one’s own child should be a desirable trait in the first place, but later, when Isaac’s descendents and those of his brother Ishmael couldn’t seem to stop trying to kill one another, he couldn’t avoid feeling accountable. [ ▲ ]
  8. St. Francis of Assisi, another of Aziraphale’s few celestial friends, had been the gardener while Crowley was Warlock’s nanny, and then Aziraphale and some demonic acquaintance of Crowley’s had been the boy’s tutors when he outgrew nannies. Of course, there wasn’t exactly precedent for a saint Falling. [ ▲ ]


	3. In Which a Fall is Witnessed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the positive responses! No cliffhanger this week, I'm not that mean.

Crowley’s telephone fell to the floor. This was because the hand that had been holding it had temporarily ceased to exist. The demon who had been attached to that hand was rushing through the phone line, crashing into electrons in his haste. He’d never heard the angel sound like that, not even when the world was ending. He didn’t think he’d heard anyone sound quite like that in...well, six thousand years, give or take.

He popped out of Aziraphale’s telephone, stumbling a bit when he realized that the space where he’d intended to manifest his left leg was currently occupied by a tightly-curled ball of angel.

If he still was an angel.

Technically, the process Aziraphale was currently experiencing, and which Crowley occasionally re-experienced in nightmares, wasn’t the actual Fall; it was a result of the fact that you’d already Fallen. It was a bit like how serving out a prison sentence wasn’t what made you a criminal; you’d already done that bit by the time you got to jail.

Heaven had decreed Aziraphale Fallen. As such, he was no longer worthy of the grace of God. This would be less of a problem if angels weren’t largely _ composed _ of God’s grace.

None of them had been sure, during the first Fall, whether they would still exist at the end of it. At least Aziraphale didn’t have to worry about that.

“I’m here, Aziraphale,” Crowley said, sinking to the floor beside the ang—beside his friend and putting his arms around him. “It’s going to be okay.”

God’s grace burned the unworthy. This was why holy water, for instance, was so very deadly to demons. Aziraphale had been found unworthy, and the grace was leaving him, but it was so thoroughly a part of his essence that it took time to unwind, and the parts of him that were leaving burned the rest of him as they left.

It felt like betrayal, Crowley remembered, the most intimate betrayal imaginable. It had taken most of his memories and even his name from him. Only Lucifer had been permitted—or perhaps forced—to keep the full memory of who he had been and what he had lost. The rest of them lost themselves.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley repeated in the former angel’s ear. There wasn’t much else he could do, but he could keep the former angel from forgetting his own name. “I’m here, Aziraphale.”

Perhaps he’d want to pick out a new name later, but at least he’d have a choice.

Falling was a slow process. Crowley’s had lasted through the entire physical fall from Heaven to Hell, and for some amount of time after. There hadn’t exactly been clocks back then. Aziraphale was the first angel to ever have his Fall timed. It took an hour and twenty-four minutes.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered weakly at the end of it. His voice was rough from sobbing “Thank you.”

“You’re not sssupposed to still have mannersss,” Crowley said, more than a bit hoarse himself. He’d been repeating Aziraphale’s name, interspersed with comforting nonsense, for entirely too long. “You musssst’ve done it wrong.”

Aziraphale made a noise in response, which Crowley chose not to characterize as a whimper.

“Think you can stand?” he asked. “Might be nice to get off the floor.”

“I’m not sure, but I’ll do my damnedest,” Aziraphale said, with a shaky expression that almost resembled a smile if you squinted. His face was still red and tear-tracked.

Laughing hurt Crowley’s throat. It was worth it. Aziraphale remembered Crowley, he was still polite, he still made jokes… Crowley hadn’t lost too much of him, wasn’t stuck with nothing but some shell of what Aziraphale had been.

Aziraphale’s shop didn’t have much in the way of comfortable seating; it might have attracted customers. The two of them stumbled to the back room, Aziraphale leaning heavily on Crowley, who pulled a chair around the table so they could both sit down without breaking contact.

“You should’ve done this at my place,” he said. “You could use a lie-down.”

“Didn’t get to choose,” Aziraphale murmured. “She barely let me call you.”

“Who?”

Aziraphale’s brow knit.

“I can’t remember,” he admitted. “An angel. I think perhaps we were friends.”

Crowley found this unlikely, but chose not to comment.

“Can’t help you there,” he said instead. “I don’t think you ever mentioned any angel friends.”

Aziraphale hummed and rested his head on Crowley’s shoulder.

“Welcome to the team, I suppose,” Crowley said. He should probably try to get word to Hell somehow.

“Don’t be absurd,” Aziraphale sniffed. “I’m not going to work for Hell.”

Crowley tried to crane his neck around to look at Aziraphale, but was unable to get a good look at him.

“That’s not funny,” he said flatly.

“Oh, I’m entirely serious, my dear,” Aziraphale said.

“Did you forget what they _ do _ down there?” Crowley asked.

There was a reason that Hell tortured the souls of the damned, even though they were notionally on their side. Hell _ hated _ humans, but the virtuous ones were protected by God, so they only got to torture the castoffs.

Hell also hated angels. Aziraphale seemed to intend to go on being an angel without God’s protection. Crowley shuddered. Now that Aziraphale had Fallen, that they'd torture him was a certainty; like the rest of them, all he could do was try to minimize its intensity and frequency by following orders.

The idea of Aziraphale suffering some of the things Crowley had been through in Hell was horrific. He got so wrapped up in thinking of how he'd make sure they didn't try to make Crowley do the torturing that he almost missed what Aziraphale was saying.

“I’m hardly intending to walk into Hell,” the former angel said. “Oh! I’m sorry, I quite forgot that you don’t know. Adam’s keeping the angels and demons off Earth, other than us—or, well, you. That’s why we haven’t heard anything. He only let the one I talked to through because she asked politely and I said it was alright.”

“Good job there,” Crowley muttered, still taking in the first part of what Aziraphale had said. Keeping the angels and demons off Earth? Could Adam do that? Well, yes, clearly he could, but for how long?

“I would have Fallen either way,” Aziraphale said. “At least this way I got a bit of notice. Just enough to call you, in fact, so yes, I’d say it was a good job.”

“Not an angel, not a demon… what would you even be?” Crowley asked.

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said, sounding lost. Crowley held him closer.  


Somewhere Above this, quite a few angels were still observing the proceedings. Yes, the bit with the two of them just sitting on the floor had gotten tedious, but Falls didn’t happen every day, and besides, there was nothing else on. Only senior angels could create the windows to view Earth, and they were all watching Aziraphale.

“He can’t just choose not to be a demon,” Gabriel said, brow furrowed. “Can he?”

“He can try,” Michael said with an expression that would, on a less angelic face, be called a sneer. “The boy can’t keep Heaven and Hell off Earth forever.”

There were nods all around, of varying degrees of enthusiasm.

“Really, Malkiel, you shouldn’t have let him call the demon,” Michael admonished. “Falling isn’t meant to be that… that… _ companionable _.”

“Sorry, sir,” Malkiel said, easily sliding her face into contrition. She didn’t look away from the window, though. Aziraphale had forgotten her. She hadn’t seen him often, since he was generally on Earth and she was generally in Heaven, but he’d always been respectful and courteous, never treated her like a freak like some of the other angels did. All angels loved one another, of course, but Aziraphale had been her only friend.

(And she’d never had a friend like that demon, her mind whispered. Nobody would have sat on the floor and held her though that agony. It had to all be a trick, of course; the Serpent was just making sure Aziraphale got on board with Hell. Demons weren’t capable of friendship. Neither were angels, really; you couldn’t have friends when you were meant to love the whole of Creation equally. Or perhaps you could, but just look at the trouble it got you into.)

She felt a hand on her arm and glanced away from the window, startled by the contact. It was that saint1 who used to hang about with Aziraphale sometimes. One of the Francises, she thought. Some of the saints were sterner in countenance than even the most zealous of avenging angels, but this one had a kind face.

He squeezed her arm comfortingly, and she nodded at him.  


In Another Place, others watched the two Fallen angels as well. The atmosphere there was considerably less funeral; in fact, it was shaping up to be a Hell of an office party. Nobody took Aziraphale’s declaration that he wouldn’t work for Hell particularly seriously. They’d all said that, at one time or another.

A minor demon named Harrison,2 one of Crowley’s scant handful of underlings and Warlock’s former tutor, had been allowed a temporary reprieve from his punishment for his role in the botched Apocalypse to attend the party, as a reward for his role in bringing about the first Fall in thousands of years. The “temporary” part didn’t bother him particularly. In Hell, all reprieves were temporary, and if he was clever and lucky, he might be able to extend this one until the next time he got in trouble.

Being clever involved not mentioning the fact that he’d never even learned the true name of Crowley’s angelic target (or was friend the better word?), let alone actually done anything to assist in his temptation. He’d known something was going on, since Warlock’s other tutor had very obviously been an angel in disguise and Crowley had told him not to worry about it, but Crowley had been impressively evasive on the subjects of why exactly there was an angel hanging around the Antichrist and why that angel gave him a friendly, if cautious, nod whenever their paths crossed rather than trying to smite him.

And then Harrison had been one of the demons standing there in Megiddo waiting for Warlock to show the slightest sign of being anything other than an ordinary human boy. They’d had him on the rack shortly after, and he’d been there until Dagon came around and asked what he knew about the corruption of the angel Aziraphale.

“Loads,” he said. He hadn’t understood much of _ Ghostbusters _ when Crowley made him watch it, but he certainly understood that there were some questions you said yes to.

And now he was at a party, surrounded by considerably more important demons who kept giving him drinks and trying to egg him into giving angel-tempting tips.

“Those cloud-headed buggers never even looked in on us,” Harrison told his rapt audience. “They trusted Aziraphale to do it for them, see? So me’n Crowley, we could just get on with things, and any time Aziraphale tried to check up on us, we kept working on _ him _.”

From what he’d already known and what he’d managed to gather, he’d put together a pretty complete picture of what had actually happened. He’d also drawn a few conclusions he didn’t think his audience would appreciate over the course of the hour and a half his boss had spent, for lack of a better word, _ hugging _ the Falling angel. Those, he kept to himself.

It would’ve been a bridge too far to suggest that Harrison _ liked _ Crowley. Demons can’t just go around _ liking _ each other. But having Crowley as a boss, well, it was interesting. Harrison had been a single-target tempter before, which had meant year after year encouraging the same dull sins in the same boring brains, until his target finally died and he moved on to the next assignment, which was only interestingly novel for about a month before they’d prove to be just as bland as their predecessor.

Crowley didn’t bother with that small-scale nonsense. Working for Crowley meant _ variety. _ Crowley had ideas, and Harrison carried them out. He’d been a marketing consultant (“Have you considered a direct mailing campaign?”) and a structural engineer (“It won’t add _ that _ much risk, and think of the savings!”) and, briefly, an acting agent (“It’s no good, Crowley, I can’t keep up with how evil the human ones are.”) It also meant time off and the freedom to do what he liked with it, since Crowley couldn’t be arsed to keep track of him when he didn’t need him.

He just hoped Crowley wasn’t actually intending to stay on Earth indefinitely. Harrison would get reassigned for sure. It wasn’t much of a hope, though. When given the opportunity to not be in Hell, well, it was one of those situations where you said yes.

  1. The angelic view of saints is somewhat complex. They were only humans, after all, and should have ranked lower than any angel; besides, they tended to be an uncomfortably serious bunch, what with the martyrdom and all. On the other hand, they were better-known than all but the greatest angels. People prayed to them. Most angels were lucky if they got to be in the background of a stained-glass window, possibly hovering around a saint. It was sort of like working at an animal shelter and having a dog go from shelter-ee to coworker.[ ▲ ]
  2. They’d all been suffering from a sort of Fall-hangover when they chose their names, and many of them had made poor choices. Harrison’s name had been Glubose until he started working for Crowley, who had insisted he take a name that wasn’t so annoyingly phlegmatic. Crowley had been the one to choose “Harrison,” possibly because _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ had just come out.[ ▲ ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're writing GO fic and having trouble with footnotes, I wrote up a [step-by-step guide](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20192773) that you might find helpful.


	4. In Which Marks And Conclusions Are Drawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> " And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:  
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name."  
-Revelation 13:16-17, KJV

Predictably, Aziraphale and Crowley were drinking. Crowley had pushed the table up against the wall with the chairs stacked on top of it so that there’d be space in Aziraphale’s back room for a small and rather surprised couch. They were leaning against one another and drinking extraordinarily expensive wine like it was their job.

“Wish there’d been wine when I Fell,” Crowley said. “Could’ve used it.”

“They’re watching us, you know,” Aziraphale said nervously.

“Who is?” Crowley peered at his glass suspiciously.

“Heaven.” Aziraphale said the word with a bitterness that was familiar to Crowley. Hearing it in the former angel’s voice made him shiver. “Hell, too, probably. The whole lot of them.”

“What?” Crowley sat up a bit straighter, leaning away from Aziraphale. Sure, it was always  _ possible _ that Hell was watching, but it was very rarely the case. “All of them? Why?”

“Nothing better to do,” Aziraphale explained. “We’re the only occult or ethereal beings allowed on—oh. I’m not ethereal any longer, am I?”

“Search me,” Crowley said. “That was always your thing. How do you know they’re watching?”

“The angel said. The one whose name I can’t remember.” Aziraphale frowned, deep in thought. “She must’ve been someone I mostly knew in Heaven. I think I remember just about everything I did on Earth.”

“Makes sense,” Crowley nodded. “Memories in Heaven would have more… more of that Divine Light of Wossname.”

“I don’t know if you mean grace or G— er.” Aziraphale cut himself off nervously. “Guess there are some things I shouldn’t say any longer.”

“Things you can say now, too, though,” Crowley pointed out. “There’s a whole world of swears just waiting for you, ang— er. Aziraphale.”

“Should I change my name, you think?” Aziraphale asked.

“Hm. Could always start using Prometheus.”

“Seemed like such a good idea at the time, giving them the sword,” Aziraphale lamented. “Right up until Cain went and—well, you know.”

“Eh, that’s humans for you,” Crowley said. He'd gotten a promotion for Cain, although in actual fact he'd been holed up with Lilith at that point, eating strange mushrooms and inventing brand new ways to fuck. It was easy to be original at the dawn of time. “Give them fire and they’ll burn each other. But they’ll use it to keep each other warm, too. He would’ve just used a rock or something, if the sword hadn’t been there.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely,” the demon insisted. “Creative buggers, humans. They would’ve figured something out.”

“Doesn’t really sound like me. Prometheus, I mean. Doesn’t feel right.” He laughed suddenly. “I’ll just keep the old one. Who’s going to bloody well stop me, eh? Adam doesn’t mind.”

“They really can’t get at us?” Crowley asked.

“That’s what the angel said,” Aziraphale confirmed. “He  _ let _ her come talk to me. Dunno how he’s that powerful, but apparently he is.”

“Maybe it was a trick?” Crowley asked doubtfully.

“Your lot would have to be going along with it, if so,” Aziraphale pointed out. “I should think someone would have come to try to recruit me by now. Or do you think they’d leave it to you?”

“Nah, they’d send up one of the big boys,” Crowley said. “Beelzebub or Moloch or somebody. Maybe Asmodeus. I think the boss actually handled it personally when that lot with the giants Fell way back in the day, but I don’t think he’d bother for just one angel.”

Falls were rare after the big one, the failed Rebellion that had dragged Crowley down with it, but not unheard-of. A second group fell not long after the first one, after they made an effort with1 the sons and daughters of man. There were giants on the Earth in those days as a result, and it was rather a headache for everyone. The Fallen angels in question became the succubi and incubi, although contrary to what most humans think, those two terms don’t refer to two different sets of beings but to the same beings in different moods.

“So they can’t get here,” Crowley concluded. “But we don’t know for how long, and they  _ are _ watching us.”

He looked around, although he knew it was foolish; there wouldn’t be a camera or anything to spot.

“Wonder if there’s a way to get them to stop,” Aziraphale mused.

“Could go to Tadfield,” Crowley suggested reluctantly. Tadfield was not really his scene.

“They’re watching Adam, too, she said. Wouldn’t work.” Aziraphale thought. “Perhaps if we go through the phone lines and come out somewhere they won’t expect?”

“They’d find us in a second,” Crowley pointed out. “The only occult entities on Earth? Easy.”

Both of them thought for a moment.

“Think your lot would stop watching if we did a bunch of sinning? Lest they be tempted, or whatever,” Crowley said.

“I doubt it.” Aziraphale sighed. “There’s nothing for it, my dear. We need to call Adam. Perhaps he’d give me a job, as well. I suppose I’m a bit… existentially unemployed, at the moment.”

Crowley pondered this.

“Think he might have two openings?” he asked.

“We’d have to ask him.” Aziraphale beamed. “Thinking of leaving the old firm, are we?”

“Well.” Crowley glanced around. “I can’t really say. Just want to know my options, you know.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said. “Hold on a tick and I’ll call Adam.” He stood up, swaying slightly.

“Maybe sober up before you phone the child demigod,” Crowley suggested.

“Oh. Right.” Aziraphale shook himself and stood straighter. Crowley followed suit, wincing as the alcohol left his bloodstream..

“I’ll just, er, go into the other room for a moment,” he said.

“Don’t take too long,” Aziraphale said. “Adam might want to talk to you as well.”

“Right,” Crowley said, and walked into the main room of the bookshop. He lowered his voice. “Listen, you lot, I can’t work if I’m worrying about you watching the whole time. I’m going to make sure Aziraphale knows he hasn’t  _ got _ any other options, and I might need to look like I’m looking for options as well to do that. So just… don’t jump to any conclusions, alright?”

No sense betting his well-being on the whims of an eleven-year-old, he figured.

  
  


Evelyn had called every hospital near Soho, and then every hospital in London. None of them had any record of her giving birth there.

She began to seriously consider the possibility that she’d gone mad. She remembered hearing about phantom pregnancy; maybe this was some sort of related syndrome? She took the tube over to Queen Mary University of London, her alma mater (sort of), to go through their library’s psychology books.

Like most children, Evelyn had not intended to be a sex worker when she grew up. She had wanted, in fact, to be an astronaut, a common enough dream. But most people are dissuaded from that dream at a relatively young age when they realize how much maths proficiency it requires. Evelyn was excellent at maths, but decided that rather than fly spaceships, she’d like to build some. She had gotten halfway through a PhD in aeronautics engineering before she dropped out, moved to Soho, and found her niche catering to the sort of wealthy clientele who feel better about themselves if they get some intellectual conversation along with their less cerebral pursuits.

Evelyn liked her job very much. She made her own hours, met all sorts of interesting people, and most importantly, if she disliked someone she could just stop seeing them, and then she would never ever have to sit in a room with them and pretend to respect them, let alone take notes while they lectured at her. Being back in the university library made her feel like a student again, which was unpleasant, but she shrugged the feeling off and got to work.

She couldn’t find any accounts of delusions of having had a child and then forgotten about it. Perhaps they’d name it after her.

She should probably go to a psychiatrist or a therapist or something, but Evelyn knew well enough what people tended to think of sex workers. They’d probably tell her that her delusion was the result of her unconscious desire to be a mother instead of a whore, or some nonsense like that. As if the two were incompatible; she had good friends who did sex work to provide for their children. As if some stranger would know better than she did whether she wanted children, or whether she liked her job.

Evelyn sighed and picked up another book, this one about delusions in general. One of these books had to have something that would tell her whether these memories were real or imagined.

  
  


Adam and Dog sat in the quarry and waited for the angel and demon to arrive. It was well after dark; he had snuck out after his parents went to bed.

Sometimes it felt as if he were two people at once. Part of him thought that sneaking out after dark for a secret meeting with the forces of darkness (and light, sort of) was an excellent adventure. His pulse raced and his nerves leapt and the air smelled of night and impending rain. Being awake wasn’t normally exciting by itself, but being awake when you were meant to be asleep was wicked.

The other part of him was very well aware that his parents wouldn’t wake up if he didn’t want them to, that no one would see him on his way to the quarry if he didn’t want them to, and that in fact he never needed to sleep if he didn’t want to. Adam hadn’t met this part of himself until the Apocalypse, and they were still getting acquainted with one another. Most of the time it just sat in the back of his mind and kept up the barriers around the Earth, keeping the angels and demons out.

Bentleys are not exactly off-road vehicles, but a black one with its lights off pulled up to the lip of the quarry anyway. Adam’s feeling of adventure intensified, and condensed into the idea of being a secret agent. He ought to play secret agents with the rest of the Them sometime. They hadn’t done secret agents before. Spies, sure, but that was different. Spies were sneaky. Secret agents got in gunfights and car chases.

He ought to have given Aziraphale a code phrase. Otherwise this could just be any two person-shaped beings who pulsed with otherworldly energy and drove flash cars.

“Let there be light,” one of the person-shaped beings said. Nothing happened. “Oh, drat. My dear, would you mind? I’m still getting the hang of it.”

The other person-shaped being snapped. Red flames rose from his fingers, casting a bright but eerie light. Adam would have to remember that one. That light would be perfect for telling ghost stories.

“Adam?” Crowley called.

“Hullo,” Adam said, walking over to the two. “Sorry ‘bout your Fall.” His grandmother had broken her hip the previous autumn, and everyone had said “sorry about your hip” when they saw her, so he was pretty sure that was the sort of thing you were supposed to say.

“You were watching too, then?” Aziraphale asked sourly. Crowley nudged him with his elbow.

“Not really,” Adam said. “Not what you’d call  _ watching _ . I just felt it, is all. It was sort of loud.”

The two exchanged a nervous glance. Adults often exchanged nervous glances around Adam, although normally they were only aware of his ability to cause trouble on the scale of “this stain is never going to come out of the carpet.”

“Speaking of watching,” Aziraphale began.

“I let ‘em watch, mostly,” Adam said. “I figured it wouldn’t do any harm, and it’d keep ‘em from getting too restless. But I’m not letting ‘em watch us right now, and I can make it so they can’t watch you anymore, if you like.”

“That would be wonderful, dear boy,” Aziraphale said warmly. “Thank you.”

Adam didn’t particularly like being called “dear boy,” but he supposed he’d let it slide in this case.

“I could’a done it with you still in London, but it’s easier to keep it up if I can, erm.” Adam did not embarrass easily, and for the most part he was getting along famously with his newfound abilities, but this particular manifestation of them was… well, embarrassing. “I didn’t think it would do anything, see, but Wensleydale found this film ‘bout doomsday prophecies and we thought we’d all watch it for a laugh, and then Pepper said it’d be fun to try, so we did, and it  _ worked _ .”

“What worked?” Crowley asked.

“If I make a mark,” Adam admitted, “on your hand—prolly on your forehead would work too, we didn’t try that—then it’s like… see, it’s easy to do big stuff, but I’m tryin’ not to do that, an’ when I do small stuff, it’s hard to sorta aim it. If I make the mark, aimin’ is dead simple. Dunno how else to explain it. It does mean it’d be easier for me to do… well, bad things to you, if I wanted. But I won’t, an’ I’ll take it off whenever you like.”

They took a moment to digest this.

“Is there any sort of, ah, fealty implied by accepting this mark?” Aziraphale asked.

“Nope,” Adam said. He was pretty sure fealty was some sort of drink. Probably not a very nice one.

“Can there be?” Crowley muttered.

“Don’t have any, sorry,” Adam said.

The two person-shaped entities in front of him exchanged glances again.

“What Crowley is trying to say,” Aziraphale said, “is that Heaven isn’t currently open to either of us, and neither of us particularly want to go to Hell, so—”

“Oh, you can stay on Earth as long as you like,” Adam said. “None of those others thought Earth was their home, you know. I could tell. You love this place. I’m not going to send you away from your home.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said. There may have been some tears in his eyes, but Adam graciously pretended not to notice. “ _ Thank _ you, dear boy. For letting us stay, and for protecting the Earth. For loving it as much as we do. Thank you.”

Adam and Crowley both shifted uncomfortably.

“Welcome,” Adam mumbled.

“We’ll help, of course,” Crowley said. Adam admired his hands-in-his-pockets slouch, although privately even he thought that sunglasses at night were a bit much. “You must have a lot to figure out, and we’ve been around a while. Don’t really have anything else to do, so. Yeah. We’ll help.”

This time it was Adam who was swamped by an uncomfortably intense wave of gratitude. He had Dog, of course, and Pepper and Brian and Wensley, and it meant the world to him that they were willing to joke with him and watch films that were sort of about him and let him write on their hands to see what happened, but they didn’t know any more than he did, not about this. Even Anathema didn’t know much about how to be an Antichrist. It was like taking the hardest class ever, except he had to be his own teacher, and if he mucked it up he wouldn’t just have to show his marks to his parents; he could  _ destroy everything _ .

“Sounds good,” he said, nodding in as grown-up a manner as he could manage. “It should be easy for me to pop over to where you are, or bring you here, once you’ve got the marks. So you won’t hafta drive out here every time. I can do them now, if you like.” He pulled a pen out of his pocket.

“Ah, what the hell, go ahead,” Crowley said, holding out his hand. With painstaking care, Adam drew a slightly wobbly but recognizable apple.

The Them hadn’t noticed anything strange, when he did theirs. Only Adam had noticed the way his awareness spread out to encompass them. Now, he always knew where they were, and if he concentrated, he could tell how they were feeling or even look in on them. They could get his attention, too, just by thinking his name as loud as they could. He told them all what had happened as soon as he’d drawn Pepper’s, and Brian and Wensley had fought over who got to get the magic drawing next, even though he told them he could do awful things through it if he wanted to.

“You’re not  _ going  _ to, though,” Brian had said like it was obvious, and that was that. Wensley’s mother had done her best to scrub his off, but it hadn’t smeared or faded or anything. Adam had taken Pepper’s off her with a look, but had redrawn it at her insistence.

He wondered if anybody ever deserved their friends, or if you just got them without deserving them and had to try and live up to it. He’d been having a lot of thoughts like that over the last month or so. They gave him a headache.

None of the Them had noticed anything, but Crowley did. Adam could tell because the red light that had been illuminating the scene went out, and because as soon as Adam finished the drawing and lifted the pen the demon jerked back and made a sound like a snake being pulled through a keyhole.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, alarmed. He snapped his fingers, producing a pale blue light which revealed that Crowley was standing ramrod-straight, like someone was pulling at the top of his head. “Adam, what’s happening to him?”

“I don’t know!” Adam said. “This didn’t happen before!”

“You don’t  _ know? _ ” Aziraphale nearly shrieked.

“Isssssssss fine,” Crowley hissed weakly, sagging into a more natural stance. “I’m fine.”

He started laughing, and Adam felt what had happened.

“Gosh, I’m sorry, Crowley,” he said. “I really didn’t realize that would happen. Maybe if I take it back off right away…”

“Don’t you dare, kid,” Crowley said, still laughing. “Don’t you fu—er, don’t you dare. I’m a free man!” He hugged Aziraphale, who was clearly still confused and extremely concerned, but hugged him back.

“What happened?” the former angel asked.

“Look at my aura,” Crowley prompted.

Adam looked. It was mostly the same as before, gold-shot green, but there had always been black lines woven through it, reaching up from Below and anchoring him down. Angelic auras glowed with holy light; demonic auras were weighed down by infernal chains.

Crowley’s aura was no longer a demon’s aura. Instead of thick black lines woven through his being, there was just one apple-red strand extending from the back of his hand to Adam.

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale breathed.

“I didn't think it was possible!” Crowley said, still laughing. “They don’t want to kick people out of Hell. They like it when you’re right there, in easy reach. But I… I renounce my citizenship! Take back my passport, I’m defecting! Kid, you’re the best.” He let go of Aziraphale to shake Adam’s hand.

“You’re not a demon,” Aziraphale said. He sounded stunned.

“I’m not a demon! You’re not an angel! We’re going to have to think of a new name for what we are. Throw out all the rules, because they’re going to have to write a new fu—” He glanced at Adam. “A whole new book for us.”

“You can  _ swear _ in front of me,” Adam said in exasperation. “I’m not a  _ baby _ . I’m the Antichrist.”

“I’m not certain you are,” Aziraphale said seriously. “You’re not just a negation of someone else. You’re something entirely new. Please—it would be my honor.” He held out his hand to Adam, who took it and began to draw, tongue between his teeth.

Aziraphale didn’t jerk back when it was finished like Crowley had. He just blinked.

“Oh, of course,” he said. “No demonic connection to break, just the new one to form. Dear boy, I cannot thank you enough. If we can ever be of assistance—”

“I do akshully have a couple questions,” Adam said. “One for each of you, sorta.”

“By all means, ask away,” Aziraphale said. Crowley nodded.

Adam gathered his thoughts for a moment. He had been doing some research, trying to figure out a bit more about who he was and what he could do and what he probably ought not to do, but these questions hadn’t actually been brought up by any of that. The first one had been raised by a half-remembered Sunday school lesson, the second by a film he’d seen the first few minutes of before his parents realized what was on and made him go to bed, which of course meant that he crept down in the middle of the night to watch the whole thing.2

“I’d been wonderin’ about that garden of Eden,” he said. “Cause there’s those trees, right? The one with the knowledge of good an’ evil sounds like it’d be dead useful—”

“Sadly, no,” Aziraphale interrupted. “The tree didn’t give the knowledge of what actions would be good or evil to do, just the knowledge that good and evil exist and that it lies within your power to do either. All humans have that, now.”

“Oh.” Adam frowned. “Where is it, though? That other tree, the eternal life one, sounds like it might be useful too. Or at least, good to know where it is.”

“They moved it to Heaven,” Crowley said. “Selfish bastards, you know, angels.”

“Ah, actually…” Aziraphale started. “You’re sure no one’s watching us right now, right, Adam?”

Adam took a moment to reach out his senses, and was able to confirm that while some angels and quite a few demons were trying to see what was happening in the quarry, their windows to Earth were instead showing cartoons. Which was actually pretty nice of him, he thought.

“No one,” he confirmed.

“The garden couldn’t be taken to Heaven,” Aziraphale said. Crowley looked at him in surprise. “God can be a bit, er, oblique, but He was very specific on that; it had to stay on this level of reality.”

“So where is it, then?” Crowley asked.

“Well, we  _ were _ keeping it on the far side of the moon, right up until the humans launched that ghastly beeping machine—”

“ _ That’s _ what you were so busy with when Sputnik launched? I thought you were just scrambling to take credit for it.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you, my dear, but I think I would have Fallen rather earlier if I’d told the Serpent where to find Eden, you know. At any rate, it’s been moved to a little, er, whatever they’re calling something that’s not quite big enough to be a planet these days. I believe the humans call it Ceres.” He beamed at the two of them.

“So, still nowhere that we could actually  _ get _ to it,” Crowley said.

“Oh, I’m sure Adam can figure something out if he needs to,” Aziraphale said, waving a hand. “What was your other question?”

“It’s more for Crowley, I guess,” Adam said. “I’ve mostly got what happened when I was a baby, with the mix-up and all, but well, I saw this film, and that lady Rosem’ry had a  _ really _ bad time of things, and it got me thinking—do you know where my mum is? My first mum, I mean. Is she alright?”

  1. Feel free to substitute your innuendo of choice. “Came in unto” is inexplicably popular. [ ▲ ]
  2. He had been ten years old at the time, and hadn’t realized that television stations generally didn’t play the same movie over and over, or that the movie would be unlikely to start right back up where it had been interrupted as soon as he turned the telly on. None of this occurred to the station manager either. [ ▲ ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The movie referenced here is of course _Rosemary's Baby_, an excellent film based on an excellent book. I highly recommend both.


	5. In Which Grief Is Experienced

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caution: angst and anti-religion sentiments ahead

On the drive home, Aziraphale chattered and Crowley thought.

“I suppose holy water would still hurt us,” the former angel mused. “Probably not as much, though. We aren't holy, but we're not  _ un _ holy either. I can't say I'm eager to test it, but perhaps we can come up with a safe way to try it.”

Crowley only half-listened. He had not been able to answer Adam's question. He had not, in fact, given so much as a moment's thought to the Antichrist’s mother. They'd handed him a baby and told him to get on with it; he never thought to ask where it came from. He'd told Adam that they'd look for her, but where could they even start?

“What do you suppose our wings look like?” Aziraphale asked. “Oh! Perhaps, let me see, ‘Like Wingges of Swannes sharl they remayne in Shappe, yet Coloure sharl spreade where theyr was Nonne.’ But that would suggest… hm. I need to read over that manuscript again.”

“The prophecy manuscript?” Crowley asked. “I thought you said we weren’t in it.”

“I didn’t think we were, but it might explain some of the more confusing passages,” Aziraphale said.

“Anything about Adam’s mother?”

“Nothing I recognized, but I’ll give it another look. There wasn’t anything about her in the original volume.” He looked at Crowley searchingly. “You think she’s still alive, then?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“I wonder if it would even stop Adam if she was dead,” Aziraphale mused. “He might be able to bring her back.”

Crowley shuddered.

The drive back to London went quickly. Crowley was still, if nothing else, a speed demon. They listened to a Chopin nocturne that had been in the car for three weeks and was still a Chopin nocturne. This sort of thing had been happening since the Apocalypse. It felt vaguely wrong.

Maybe none of it was real. Maybe Crowley had passed out from fear and was having someone else’s life flash before his eyes, and when he came to he’d still be about to face down Satan with a tyre iron.

Aziraphale felt strangely reluctant to leave the car when they arrived at his bookshop, but he brushed the feeling off and waved Crowley goodbye. There was reading to be done, after all.

The couch Crowley had summoned was still in the back room. Aziraphale sent it away and put out the table and chairs again, so that he could spread out the pages of the manuscript for easier cross-referencing.

He couldn’t focus. His eyes kept dragging themselves over to the floor by the telephone, the place where he’d Fallen.

It had been very nearly easy, when he was with Crowley, to tell himself that he’d gained more than he lost by Falling (particularly with Hell more or less out of the picture). No more threat of being recalled to Heaven hanging over him. No more worrying that they’d find out about the Arrangement or order him to kill Crowley. No more worrying, in fact, that he’d Fall. It was a relief, really, to have it over and done with.

But he’d never felt so alone. He hadn’t always  _ liked _ Heaven, but being cut off from them was never what he’d wanted. It felt like there was a scream trapped inside his chest, another Aziraphale in there beating tiny hands against the inside of his breastbone and crying that he’d be good, really he would, if they’d only let him go  _ home _ …

And no matter how many times he told it that the Earth was his home and he didn’t want to be Heaven’s sort of good anyway, it wouldn’t stop. He’d spent six thousand years identifying himself, above all else, as an angel, and now he wasn’t. They’d thrown him away. He wasn’t  _ anything _ now, not angel or demon or human.

He tried to pay attention to the manuscript, and read the same prophecy for what might be the hundredth time that night.

“Like Wingges of Swannes sharl they remayne in Shappe, yet Coloure sharl spreade where theyr was Nonne. Choice alone sharl binde themme, who togethere sharl finde Morre thann what was Loste.”

He ought to have had Crowley come in with him. Or perhaps not; he had to get used to this vast, echoing loneliness at some point, and having the former demon about would just make him forget he was lonely.

He turned to one of the other prophecies that had confused him before.

“The Appel-Markede sharl Growe in Numbre, and sharl paffe from my Visionne into the Spheres, and not all sharl Return. Yet the Firfte Wife sharl learn the Tafte of the Fruitte, and the Childe of Darkneffe sharl tafte of the Othere, and all shall paffe beyonde Prophecie.”

Aziraphale glanced at his hand. He’d assumed that “Appel-Markede” meant humanity, but apparently not. The Childe of Darkneffe had to be Adam, of course; perhaps the Firfte Wife was his mother? He didn’t think the  _ actual _ First Wife was around any longer, although Crowley would know better than he.

He wondered how Crowley was spending his night. Sleeping, probably, but maybe he was out celebrating his new freedom from Hell now that he didn’t have a newly-Fallen angel around to bring him down. Aziraphale felt self-pitying and self-loathing and very, very alone. His thinking felt fogged, sort of like being drunk without the pleasant glow. Gradually he moved from the chair to the space under the table, putting one more flimsy barrier between himself and Heaven.

For six thousand years, Aziraphale had been devoted to a deity who had once instructed His followers to pluck out their own eyes if that was what it took to avoid having sinful thoughts. Only a minority of angels and a small handful of saints had ever been inherently pure enough that this was never a concern; an even smaller number took the admonition literally and actually removed their own sensory organs.

The rest, Aziraphale included, made sure to create some sort of barrier between the source of sinful thought, whether it was a sensory organ or their own subconscious, and their actual behaviour.1 Some humans were able to acknowledge impure thoughts without ever actually acting on them, but as angels were expected to be entirely pure even within their own minds, this had never been an option for Aziraphale. Therefore, like most angels and countless humans, he had unknowingly erected a whole unconscious apparatus intended to keep himself from ever thinking incorrectly.

Currently, that apparatus was under more strain than it had ever been, and although Aziraphale was not consciously aware of its existence, he was feeling its weight. Most of the time all it needed to do was keep him from noticing the contradictions in his own thoughts: Heaven was infallible but it would really be better if they didn’t find out about some particular action of his; demons were vile creatures but he preferred Crowley’s company to any angel’s; he didn’t have free will but he could talk back to the Metatron.

But now he’d Fallen, and it hurt, and he must have deserved it or it wouldn’t have happened, but he  _ didn’t  _ deserve it, not for saving the world. He was cut off from God’s love, and that meant he would be in agony all his days, but when he’d been with Crowley it hadn’t felt so bad—it hurt, but it felt like he could heal, like he could recover. Crowley’s presence mitigated God’s absence, and that shouldn’t be possible.

He wasn’t supposed to be able to recover. He shouldn’t have been able to receive comfort, even; he ought to be filled with such pain and emptiness that all he could do was lash out with cruelty and wickedness. He didn’t feel wicked, but he must be.

The pain of these incompatible thoughts crushing against one another made him realize that he’d been hiding things from himself all along, that he’d known “it’s right to honor the Arrangement” and “it was wrong to make the Arrangement” at the same time, that he’d thought “I love all of God’s creation” and “I can’t put up with this person any longer” despite the contradiction, so many other thoughts that he hadn’t questioned, had carefully kept himself from questioning.

Was he a hypocrite, then? Or—and this was the most forbidden thought of all—had he been forced to tie his own mind in these knots because Heaven demanded perfect obedience and God demanded wholehearted worship and they were  _ wrong _ ?

A wave of anger swept over him, a degree of rage that he’d never before felt on his own behalf, and for a moment he didn’t know whether he was angry at Heaven or at God or at himself or at Crowley, for leading him down this path. He could have chosen to cling to that fury, he realized, to lay the blame entirely on the Serpent, to cast himself as just another victim of the master tempter.

But then he wouldn’t even have Crowley any longer, and that would be truly unbearable.

Exhausted by the roiling of his mind, he tried to sleep, but between his inexperience with the activity and the uncomfortable spot where he’d curled up on the floor, it refused to come. Instead he went into a sort of whirling fugue of misery and anger, blaming himself, Crowley, Adam, Heaven, and God each in turn.  
  
  


Malkiel and St. Francis had stood together at the window to Earth that showed Aziraphale until it ceased to show the former angel and began to instead show some sort of moving drawing. Malkiel was entirely confused by the images.

“They’re called cartoons,” Francis explained, leading the angel a little way away from the confused crowd. He’d been exposed to more than enough of them while he’d been watching over Warlock on Aziraphale’s behalf. “They’re a way of entertaining human children. I suspect this is Adam’s doing.”

“The Antichrist is shielding Aziraphale?” Malkiel repeated, shocked. “Why?”

“I couldn’t guess,” Francis said. “He’s only half-human, and it’s been a while since I was eleven, you know.”

“Yes, of course,” Malkiel said, chastened. “I didn’t mean to imply that you should know what the Antichrist is thinking.”

“I believe he prefers to be called Adam,” Francis said. “At any rate, I doubt we shall see much more of our former friend for a while.”

“Former friend,” Malkiel repeated. “Do you know, I don’t believe I’ve ever had one of those before. It’s a strange feeling.”

“Grief,” Francis said. “Mourning. At least, that’s what humans tend to feel when they lose someone.”

Malkiel abruptly realized that she’d never considered that aspect of mortality: the fact that you would be surrounded by other mortals, and could lose them at any time.

“But you know that you’ll meet them again in Heaven,” she pointed out. “It isn’t the same.”

“Even a saint may have sinful friends,” Francis said with a sad smile. “Not all of my former friends made it here. And we don’t  _ know _ that we’ll meet again. That’s why faith is required.”

“Well, I have faith that neither of us will ever meet Aziraphale again, unless it’s as an enemy,” Malkiel said. “I have to, don’t I?” The idea of having to do battle with some twisted, evil version of Aziraphale someday made her feel sick, but she had to have faith that he’d deserved his Fall.

“I have a garden in an out-of-the-way area,” Francis said. “I’d be honoured if you’d join me there. We can share stories about the friend we’ve lost. It’s a common human tool for managing grief.”

“You don’t think it would be wrong?” Malkiel asked. “He did Fall, after all.”

“He may always have been destined to Fall; only the good Lord knows,” Francis said. “But that doesn’t erase the good he did before then. I can’t imagine it would be wrong of us to remember that.”

Malkiel nodded, and allowed herself to be led into the unfashionable part of Heaven: the part where the human souls dwelt. Angels and saints could come and go as they pleased (although angels rarely did), but ordinary humans were confined there. Well,  _ confined _ probably wasn’t the right word, Malkiel corrected herself. It was just that this was the best place for them to be, and if they didn’t realize this, they were gently reminded of it.

Francis’ garden was beautiful, of course—everything in Heaven was beautiful—but parts of it were clearly in need of weeding.

“I need work to do,” Francis explained, leading Malkiel to a small pavilion coated in ivy, with simple wooden chairs inside. “Idleness was never in my nature.”

“But you earned your rest, surely,” Malkiel said.

“Work is how I rest.” They sat together in the pavilion. Neither the plants nor the pavilion were truly real, of course, nor was the birdsong that seemed to filter in from the distance. That is, they were real in the way geometric concepts were real; a line segment is a useful and comprehensible idea, but that doesn’t mean it can actually be found on Earth.

The plants were, more or less,  _ too _ real for the fruits and vegetables they bore to be eaten, even by a saint or an angel. It struck Malkiel suddenly as unfair, although she hastily corrected herself: it was simply ineffable.

“I was still alive when I met Aziraphale,” Francis said. “We were both caring for lepers. I didn’t like him at first—I had renounced material wealth and comforts, you know, and he was rather fond of them. But he was kind, and kept up the spirits of the patients and the nurses both. I didn’t realize he was an angel until much later.”

Malkiel listened avidly to the tale, happy to learn more about her former friend. It felt like she was capturing the last pieces of Aziraphale, keeping some remnant of him with her even as he himself became inaccessible. Perhaps humans were on to something with this tradition of theirs.

The conversation went on for an immeasurable time, of course, as time in Heaven was not exactly linear. It was a significant duration, though. Malkiel thought that perhaps she could cry, if she had been in a body adapted to such things, but somehow she felt lighter than she had at the start.

“I’m glad I was the one to tell him,” she said, when they’d reached the end of their stories. “Gabriel was going to do it himself, but I don’t think he would have been… do you think it’s alright that I was sympathetic?”

“Our Lord himself showed sympathy to criminals,” Francis said. “I can’t imagine that you did anything wrong.” He laid a hand comfortingly on hers. The contact should have felt alien—angels didn’t touch one another with any great frequency, let alone casually touching the spirits of the dead—but his hand was warm with the remembered heat of life, and she appreciated it.

“Thank you,” she said. “I would never have thought to speak of him, or had anyone to do it with, if it hadn’t been for you.”

“It’s been a comfort to me as well,” Francis said. “And I don’t get many chances to help someone real. If I’ve been of any assistance to you, it was my pleasure as well as my honor.”

“I suppose people in Heaven don’t need help very often,” Malkiel said.

“Well, there are some of us who—I believe it’s called a ‘support group,’” Francis said. “We get together to talk about how it feels, those of us who dedicated our lives to reducing suffering on Earth and are no longer able to do so. We help each other.”

“I had no idea,” Malkiel said. She’d never really thought about it, to be honest. Living humans were to be encouraged to help one another; the virtuous dead were meant to simply relax, knowing they’d done their jobs well enough. She’d never considered that it might not be enough for  _ them _ . It almost—if you didn’t know that of course it had been designed by Someone infallible—seemed like a deeply flawed system.

“Would you like to come to one of our meetings?” Francis asked. “I’m sure no one would mind.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Malkiel said. “I would like to see you again, though. Might I come back here, later?” Later was relative in Heaven, but Malkiel didn’t think it would be too long, in this case.

“I might not be here when you come,” Francis said. “But I’m sure to return eventually.”

“Then I’ll see you again,” Malkiel said. The two smiled at each other, and for a moment Malkiel wished that embraces were  _ de rigueur _ in Heaven.

  1. Many humans who were nominally a part of this religion didn’t go quite so far, and merely did their best not to get caught at their sinning. Aziraphale had little in common with these; whatever else he may have been, he was at least sincere in his convictions. [ ▲ ]


	6. In Which Comfort is Received

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for giving you a big dose of hurt and then being a week late with the comfort, but here's a nice long update to make it up to you.

After what felt like centuries, the grey light of morning began to creep from the dirty window towards Aziraphale’s hiding place under the back room table. It was nothing like the light of Heaven, and he resented it for that. A few hours after that, he heard the shop door open. Crowley never did bother with niceties like knocking or locks. A pair of snakeskin probably-shoes made their way into Aziraphale’s field of view.

“I brought scones,” Crowley said.

“I’m sure scones will fix everything,” Aziraphale croaked sarcastically.

“Well, no, you’d need tea for that,” Crowley said. He sat cross-legged on the ground beside Aziraphale. “I’m sorry I left you alone. You seemed like you were doing so well, I didn’t even think—of course it got worse when you were alone with nothing to distract you.”

“Tell me it gets better,” Aziraphale implored. “The loneliness, the emptiness—tell me it goes away.”

“It’ll never be like it was,” Crowley said. “That connection, that certainty that you’re a part of something greater… I can’t quite remember what it felt like, but I know I haven’t felt anything like it since. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to be miserable forever, Zira.”

“‘Zira’?”

“Needed a new nickname for you.” Crowley set the bag of scones aside and awkwardly held his arms out. “Look, I’m rubbish at this, but if you’d like…”

Aziraphale launched himself at the demon, clinging to him with all his strength, and when Crowley’s arms came around him it didn’t fill the absence of God’s love, but it was real and it was good. It  _ was _ good, and anyone who said it wasn’t was wrong, ineffability be damned.

“Why didn’t they want me?” Aziraphale asked, and it was very nearly a sob. “Why didn’t He want me? I knew I wasn’t perfect, I wasn’t what I should have been, but I  _ tried _ — I thought—”

“I know,” Crowley said. There was barely-banked anger in his voice. “You were the best of the lot, and they tossed you out like rubbish. They were  _ wrong _ , and you can still be good without them if you want.”

“There is no good without God,” Aziraphale said automatically. “God is goodness.”

“Tell that to the children who were living in Sodom and Gomorrah, or just before the Flood, or the firstborn sons of Egypt,” Crowley said. “Tell that to the atheists working in soup kitchens. Tell it to the last woman I tempted to leave her husband—he was beating her, and she wouldn’t leave before I gave her a push, because that blessed book says to obey your husband.”

“But she’s probably going to Hell now,” Aziraphale protested weakly. “She would have suffered on Earth and been rewarded in Heaven, if you hadn’t gotten involved.”

“But that’s  _ fucked _ ,” Crowley insisted. “You can’t tell me that’s right.”

Aziraphale just cried. Crowley sighed.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not good at comforting. You want to at least get off the floor?”

The two crawled awkwardly out from under the table and stood unsteadily. Aziraphale’s crying had slowed to a trickle of misery.

“Okay,” Crowley said. “Like I said, I’m rubbish at this, but tea and scones are probably a good start. Sit down and I’ll put the kettle on.”

Aziraphale sat at the table, fighting the urge to follow Crowley into the kitchenette. He needed to be able to hold it together sitting alone for a few moments, for G—for  _ his own _ sake.

“Here we are,” Crowley said, emerging with two mugs of tea. “You may not be an angel any longer, but I don’t think anything could make you stop being English. Drink up.”

Aziraphale tried to laugh, and failed rather miserably at it. It was good to have tea and scones to focus on, something concrete, but they were gone far too soon.

“Alright,” Crowley said when they’d finished. “What do you need? Comforting things, uh… there’s sleep, alcohol, a wide variety of stronger drugs, food, oral sex, flying up real high and then screaming where no one can hear you…”

“Can we just leave?” Aziraphale asked. “It was, I was just over there by the telephone when…”

“Right, yeah,” Crowley said. “I can do that. Come on, the Bentley’s right outside.”

“I apologize for being such a mess,” Aziraphale said once they were in the car and underway. “I’m sure you handled your Fall with considerably more aplomb.”

“Well, I do everything with more style than you do, of course,” Crowley said. “Ought to go without saying. But look, don’t go telling anyone, but back during the first Fall, some of us tried to help one another, alright? Before Satan started getting things organized and set the tone, like. None of us could remember much, but we knew we were all damned together, and figured we could at least do better by each other than Heaven had done by us. I was worse off than a lot of them, actually. We could really only remember the time we’d spent on wickedness and rebellion and all, since everything else was too Heavenly for us to hold, and I’d never exactly been a ringleader. All I had were a few vague memories of lurking around in the back of meetings and things. The others helped me out. So I can’t very well let you go through this alone.”

Aziraphale stared at Crowley in astonishment.

“We didn’t talk about it, later,” the former demon continued. “Not all of us were part of it, and the ones who were couldn’t find each other after; we couldn’t remember our old names, and we hadn’t picked out new ones yet. Most of us took new shapes, later, too. I tried to keep my lot together even after Satan started putting the Infernal hierarchy in place and encouraging all the unpleasantness down there—I mean, aside from the rivers of molten sulfur and all, those were already there. Anyway, that’s why I got booted up to Earth, to make trouble up here instead.”

Aziraphale continued to stare. He’d never heard of this, never so much as the suggestion of a whisper that the demons hadn’t been intent on torturing one another from the very start. Why hadn’t he ever suspected? Of course no one would join a rebellion if all it was offering was suffering. Some of the Fallen must have liked one another, cared for one another even. It seemed obvious now that he knew.

“Crowley, I—”

“Save it,” Crowley cut him off. “Did you find anything good in that manuscript of yours?”

“Oh! Yes, actually,” Aziraphale said, feeling a bit better as the focus shifted away from his own pain. “I was wondering, do you know whether Lilith is still about?”

“Oh, I see,” Crowley said. “Tired of talking about things that are uncomfortable for you, so you have to ask about my ex, is that it? She must still be around someplace. Haven’t seen her in ages, though. Why do you ask?”

“You’re sure she’s still alive?” Aziraphale asked, surprised. “I should’ve thought that whatever exchange she made for long life would have ended by now.”

“What? No, that wasn’t us—er, them. She can’t die.” Crowley stopped the car. Aziraphale thought it was for emphasis until he looked away and realized they had parked by Crowley’s flat. They paused the discussion until they were settled on Crowley’s oddly antiseptic-looking, but comfortable, sofa.

“Why can’t Lilith die?” Aziraphale asked.

“Come on, ang—Zira, you ought to know your Genesis better than that.” Crowley smiled smugly.

“She isn’t  _ in _ Genesis,” Aziraphale protested.

“No, but the reason she can’t die is. You remember the bit about the fruit. ‘In the day that thou eatest thereof…’”

“‘Thou shalt surely die,’” he finished. “But… surely she must have…”

“Pft, nah. She’d barely been formed a minute when she started fighting with Adam and stormed out of the Garden. Didn’t have a  _ chance _ to eat from the tree.” Crowley took off his sunglasses to give his most serpentine grin. “Probably why she hung around with such unssssssavory characters later. Didn’t know any better.”

“Well, if I’m reading this right, we may be meeting up with her,” Aziraphale said, and told Crowley the prophecy.

He thought over what he knew of Adam’s first wife—the original Adam, of course, not the eleven-year-old Antichrist. Lilith had been created alongside Adam, but had immediately started rowing with him (supposedly for reasons that were rather prurient in nature) and, as Crowley said, stormed out of Eden. She’d gone north, if he remembered correctly, and rumour had it that she was the mother of a number of monsters who had plagued mankind later. (Monster-fighting had never been among Aziraphale’s duties, fortunately.)

Crowley had mentioned her before, but only in vague terms and innuendos. Never anything as concrete as what he’d said earlier…

“Is she really your ex?” Aziraphale asked.

“More or less,” Crowley said, waving a hand. His smile had gone less serpentine than fond. “We run into each other every few centuries and spend a few months fucking each others’ brains out, and then one of us gets bored and wanders off. Usually her. Not much of an attention span, those prelapsarian humans.”

“How so?”

“No knowledge of good and evil, right? She doesn’t really get that other people are, you know,  _ people _ .” He paused. “Er, independent entities with their own consciousness. Whatever.”

“I’m sorry, dear,” Aziraphale said. “That sounds very difficult to deal with in someone you care for.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far. I mean, she’s fun, but…” Crowley trailed off in the face of Aziraphale’s knowing look. “Yeah, alright, maybe a bit. But I don’t expect her to be anything but what she is, you know?”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Aziraphale said, beaming at the former demon.

“Yeah, yeah.” Crowley brightened. “Hey, I never got a ‘no’ on that hard drugs idea earlier. We should get high.”

“What?” Aziraphale blinked at the sudden conversational swerve. “Why?”

“Because we’re free, er, entities! You don’t have to worry about upholding the law any more, your body doesn’t have to be a temple—or at least, it could be the fun kind—and I don’t have to save my stash for temptations. Some of it’s hard to miracle up exactly right, you know. Too much chemistry.” He began to pull plastic baggies from a cabinet near the television. “Let’s see, ecstasy’s fun (hence the name), pot’s an easy one to start on, I’ve got a  _ lot _ of coke sitting around,1 some poppers—”

“What’s wrong with good old-fashioned wine?” Aziraphale asked. “Humans never needed any of this nonsense before; I don’t see why I should—”

“You want old-fashioned? I’ve got mushrooms,” Crowley offered. “Humans had these figured out before they even came up with that weird chunky beer. Remember that stuff?”

“Horrid,” Aziraphale said, shuddering. “Really, my dear, this is entirely unnecessary. If I were to make a list of the things I’d like to do now that Heaven isn’t watching and Falling isn’t a concern, hard drugs would be very nearly at the bottom.” He realized his mistake immediately, and as expected, Crowley pounced.

“Is that sssssssso,” the Serpent said, clearly delighted. Aziraphale felt uncomfortably like a sparrow before a snake. “What would be at the top of that list?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Aziraphale waffled. “I’ve hardly been dreaming of, of blasphemy or hurting people or anything like that.”

“Don't knock blasphemy; it can be damn good fun. Come on, there must be something you’ve wanted to do.” He searched his mind for things that would be specifically forbidden. “We could… make graven images? I don’t know, have you got a neighbor with a particularly covetable wife?”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

“Coveting isn’t much fun anyway. It’s when you finally  _ get _ the neighbor’s wife that’s fun.” Crowley’s sly grin returned. “There’s an idea. You just said no to drugs and I know you don’t like rock and roll. How about sex?”

“Ah.” Aziraphale felt his face heat up. He was fairly certain he couldn’t feign cool indifference to this suggestion, and horribly uncertain that he wanted to. “Um.”

It wasn’t as if he’d never thought about it before. He had, in fact, tried out Lust, made the effort to become entirely corporeal and human just to see what it felt like. It had been during the runup to the Apocalypse, when they still thought Warlock was the Antichrist and there was good reason to be concerned that he was running out of time to give Earthly pleasures a try. He’d made the experiment alone in his bookshop, of course, just to be certain nothing would get out of hand. Not that he’d taken anything  _ in _ hand. He’d just tried thinking about things, to see what would happen.

Simply imagining nude human forms elicited no more reaction than normal. It wasn’t as if nudity was inherently sexual, after all. Imagining humans engaged in sexual intercourse created an interesting sort of warm feeling, as if his blush had extended from his face to his nether regions, but that was about it. It wasn’t until he decided the experiment had confirmed his belief that it wasn’t anything worth getting worked up over, really, and he started thinking about his next meeting with Crowley that he got a real reaction. He shut the whole thing down immediately and refused to even analyze what that reaction had actually been. 

The odd thing was, Aziraphale realized, Heaven had been more down on Lust than any of the others. Plenty of angels got a bit Proud in a holier-than-thou sort of way, and some were more than a bit Wrathful with the smiting, but there'd been a zero-tolerance policy on Lust for millennia. So he'd felt fairly secure indulging in a bit of Sloth and Gluttony—everyone did it—but never anything involving, well, to put it bluntly, orgasm. It wouldn't have been stood for.

But he could do anything he liked, now, as long as it didn't break Adam’s rule against interference. The trouble was…

“I think if I did anything like that, I’d want it to be a bit, you know, special,” he admitted. “And I don’t think I’m in quite the right frame of mind for, well… intimacy.” It was all too easy to imagine the sort of desperate clinging that would be the likely result.

“Fair enough,” Crowley said. “Although I reserve the right to mock your sentimentality at a later date, understand? It’s less fun, kicking you while you’re down.”

“I suppose that’s fair as well.”

“You know what you really need? A nap. Let’s go to bed.”

“In the same bed?” Aziraphale blushed. “I just said I don’t want to have sex, Crowley.” He pushed the idea of sex with Crowley out of his mind, realized what he was doing and that it had been a habitual action, and couldn’t help but conclude that he avoided thinking about sex with Crowley rather often. That was just too much to contemplate at the moment. He felt like his brain was full of porridge.

“Sex doesn’t automatically happen just because you’re in a bed together,” Crowley said, rolling his eyes. “I just thought you might not want to be alone right now.”

“I suppose I’m no longer too angelic to share a bed if you’re no longer too demonic to cuddle,” Aziraphale said. The idea of it pushed back some of the cold that had filled him since his Fall, and he decided that he could enjoy it without trying to analyze it just now.

“Fine,” Crowley said in a clearly affected put-upon voice, “but I call big spoon.”

Aziraphale blinked at him uncomprehendingly.

  
  


Anathema Device had always thought that she’d quite like to be a mother, if it wasn’t for the fact that the world was going to end when she was twenty. When that obstacle unexpectedly resolved itself, the fact that she was single and unemployed seemed trivial by comparison.

The single part was by choice, of course. Although they’d already broken up by the time Anathema established that she was indeed pregnant, Newt had both gallantly and foolishly offered to marry her. She had firmly told him that keeping up with the child maintenance payments would be quite sufficient, thank you very much, and he was welcome to visit whenever he liked as long as he called ahead, but his assistance was not otherwise required. He had seemed entirely relieved.

She intended to retrieve Agnes’ manuscript from Aziraphale once she’d given birth, to make sure that her stock portfolio continued paying sufficient dividends for herself and the child to live on, but the idea of having this one thing be a surprise—well, three things, the child’s birthdate, sex, and name—was deeply appealing.

Possibly for this reason, she kept changing her mind about the name. Pulsifer would be a fine middle name, but not even a witch’s child should have to go through primary school being called “Newt,” as Newt himself fervently attested, and she felt rather proprietary of the name “Anathema,” so naming it after one of them didn’t particularly appeal. At the moment, she was contemplating lunar names. Diana or Selene could be nice for a girl, but there weren’t a lot of good male moon names, probably for menstruation-related reasons, which seemed rather reductive to her.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” she called. The door was unlocked, but warded against anyone intending harm, and while her morning sickness had finally stopped, she was having the worst backaches. Getting out of the chair was kept to a minimum.

A small head with a crooked grin and tousled golden hair poked into the house. Anathema briefly wondered whether exposure to the Antichrist would be bad for the baby, then realized that getting Adam to be fond of it would probably be the best possible thing for it.

“Hullo,” Adam said, ambling into the room. “D’you think you could help me with somethin’ witchy?”

“Well, that depends,” Anathema said. What sort of magical assistance could Adam possibly need from her? “What do you need help with?”

“I’ve been tryin’ to—oh, you’ve got a baby in you!” he said, interrupting himself. “I wondered why you had all that extra life comin’ off you.”

“Er, yes,” Anathema said. “I’m pregnant. What do you mean by extra life?”

“I dunno, really. It’s like, the difference between a tree without fruit and one with, ‘cept you can’t see the fruit.” Adam peered at her middle. “Or I guess you sorta can, but you know what I mean.”

Anathema considered the prospect of plant names for the baby.

“It’s sorta funny, akchully,” Adam said. “I was hopin’ you could help me find my mum, an’ I guess you’re gonna be a mum too.”

“Your mum?” Anathema repeated. She’d met Mrs. Young, and formed an impression of someone kind but not particularly bright or interesting. She did not seem the sort to run off.

“My first mum, I mean,” Adam said. “The one who, y’know, was pregnant with me an’ all. I tried listening for anyone who knew they were the Antichrist’s mum, but I couldn’t find anyone, and then I tried sorta tracing my blood, but I think the other half sorta overpowered my mum’s half ‘cause all I got was DOWN. Although I s’pose that could mean she’s dead, and she’s down there too.”

He looked sadder than Anathema had ever seen him look.

“I asked ‘ziraphale an’ Crowley, too, but they didn’t know. They said they’d look for her, but they couldn’t even find  _ me _ , so I was hopin’ you’d have a, y’know, a findin’ spell or something.” He took a deep breath. “I don’ want her to’ve gotten hurt because of me.”

“Adam,” Anathema began gently, “If anything did happen to her, it wouldn’t be your—”

“If I didn’ take responsibility for things that weren’ really my fault, the world woulda ended,” Adam said. “I just want to find her, and help her if she needs help.”

It was difficult to find a counter-argument.

“Well, Aziraphale has Agnes’ manuscript, and he should be able to search it as well as I could,” Anathema conceded generously, unaware that Aziraphale was currently somewhat distracted. “In case there’s anything about her in there, you know. I don’t think I can do anything about finding her beyond what you already did, but I do know a charm to find out whether both of your biological parents are still alive. That’d be a step in the right direction, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “Thanks. What do I need to do?”

“Well, first it would be helpful to create a spiritual connection between the two of us,” Anathema said, thinking. This would normally be trivial, but she didn’t really want to mess about with half-demon blood while she was pregnant, and trying to merge their auras would have been risky in any case, considering how overwhelming Adam’s was. “There are a few different methods to do that, but some of them wouldn’t be safe with me pregnant, and the rest would have to wait until the full moon, I’m afraid…”

“Oh,” Adam said with a grin, pulling a pen out of his pocket. “I can prolly help with that, if you’re okay with it.”

Pumila for a girl, Anathema thought once Adam had explained and she had consented. His drawing was surprisingly steady, and she wondered if he’d been practicing. Or Sylvester for a boy, perhaps. She owed rather a lot to  _ malus pumila  _ and  _ malus sylvestris _ , the apple and the crabapple.

The spell itself took only a few moments once the connection had been forged. One parent neither properly alive nor dead, as expected, and the other—

“She’s alive, Adam,” Anathema said.

The boy hugged her tightly.

  
  
  


Crowley found it comforting, on a physical and possibly reptile level, to wrap himself around something warm. He had certainly cuddled before, even if perhaps it didn’t quite fit with his image. But it felt good, and he wanted to do things that felt good, and that was all properly demonic even if having a good cuddle perhaps wasn’t.

And now he didn’t have to worry about any of that, anyway. He was fairly certain Adam wouldn’t mind. After all, the number of the Beast was 666, three bodies slotted together. Crowley knew from experience that given the opportunity he preferred to be the middle spoon, but this was nice too.

Far better than nice, really, because the sleeping form he was tucked against was Aziraphale’s.

He’d always wanted Aziraphale, even back when the two of them were discorporating one another with some regularity. That was all perfectly fine;  _ wanting _ was an entirely acceptable demonic activity, particularly when one wanted the unattainable. Nobody talked about longing for Heaven any longer, but they all still did it, and loathed Heaven all the more for inspiring and frustrating that want. So for Crowley to covet his Adversary was entirely above-board. That impossible desire should have made it all the easier, and all the more unpleasant, to do his job, and Hell valued effectiveness and misery in its agents in equal measure.

It  _ had _ all been entirely above-board until that time in Egypt, a generation or two after Jesus’ death. Crowley and Aziraphale managed to work things out peacefully more often than not at that point, but the demon had been sent to kill the first Bishop of Egypt before Christianity could really take hold there, and the angel was assigned to protect him; there simply wasn’t room for negotiation, and so they had come to blows. Aziraphale generally had the upper hand in such fights, being the metaphysically stronger of the two, but Crowley was considerably trickier, and he’d gotten the angel flat on his back in the sucking mud of the Nile. Crowley remembered the moment vividly, his hands pinning Aziraphale’s arms, their faces only inches apart.

And Aziraphale’s face had gone… confused. Crowley was a tempter,  _ the _ Tempter; he knew what it looked like when someone realized they wanted something they shouldn’t. It had been nothing so damning as arousal, of course, just a sort of wish that it could be different, that  _ this _ could be different. The angel’s eyes had gone to Crowley’s mouth, and they had  _ not _ been checking for fangs, and when their eyes met again Aziraphale’s were swimming with wordless questions.

Crowley could have had him then. He could have kissed him, a chaste kiss that wouldn’t scare him off, and pulled the angel up with him, and laughed, and began a temptation that would have revitalized his career after his rather embarrassing failure with Jesus in the desert. Crowley could have  _ had _ him, could have led him down that path of good intentions… could have made him Fall, and claimed him as a conquest. Could have let the illicit consummation turn sour, as it inevitably would, and fucked him every day until they couldn’t stand the sight of each other. Could have made him miserable.

He sank his fangs into the angel’s neck instead, and felt his essence ascend to where Crowley couldn’t follow.

They’d spent time together already, was the thing; time that hadn’t been fighting, that is. He already  _ knew _ Aziraphale, knew that he was a bit silly and was always excited to read a new scroll and could sometimes be kind when he ought to have been full of righteous fury or sad when he ought to have been smug. They’d already been drunk together, and the angel had trusted him—him! The Serpent!—not to take unsporting advantage of his inebriated state. They’d find each other sometimes, in the aftermath of a plague or a war or a natural disaster that neither of them had caused and neither of them could fix, and pass survivor’s guilt back and forth with the bottle.

They weren’t exactly  _ friends _ , then. Friends generally didn’t have a running tally of who had killed whom the most often.2 But they knew each other well enough that Crowley knew he didn’t just want to  _ have _ Aziraphale; he wanted him to be happy. He wouldn't be happy if he was Crowley’s. And  _ that _ was downright un-demonic.

At any rate, killing the Bishop, a zealous fellow named Mark, had only succeeded in martyring him. They’d made him a saint eventually. Aziraphale had been quite smug about it once he’d returned to Earth; he’d rather liked Mark, who had been something of an author.

And now, nearly two thousand years later, just look where that self-restraint had gotten them. Aziraphale had Fallen after all, and Crowley certainly had to bear at least a portion of the blame for that. If nothing else, he’d convinced the angel to help him prevent the Apocalypse.

Maybe now, though...maybe now he could want without having to hate or destroy that which he wanted. Maybe he could have Zira without trickery or force, and maybe they could both be happier for it. After all, here they were in bed together, with Aziraphale sleeping in his arms; as far as Heaven or Hell would’ve been concerned, Crowley already good as had him.3

But Crowley knew that just because Aziraphale had Fallen didn’t mean he’d automatically return his feelings. He needed comfort, and Crowley was a friend he could trust to give it to him. That would be enough, if their relationship continued to be  _ only _ the most important friendship of Crowley’s existence. It would be more than enough.

The cuddling was a rather brilliant addition, though, and Crowley hoped this wouldn’t be the only time. Aziraphale was warm and soft and so very  _ present _ , for all that he was asleep. Crowley could press his face against Zira’s back and fill his world with the smells of book dust and stardust and cocoa, the most familiar and comfortable smell in the world. He didn’t mean to get in more than a light doze, wanted to be there in case Aziraphale needed him when he woke, but that level of comfort couldn’t be denied, and he drifted off.

  1. Crowley didn’t actually like cocaine, but he knew it was something that the sort of human he pretended to be would like, and it was _definitely_ something that the sorts of humans he tended to tempt enjoyed, so he kept quite a lot of it on hand. One-on-one tempting wasn’t his style, but some of his more involved projects required certain connections, and inviting someone over for coke and an orgy was a good way to convince them that you were a friend. [ ▲ ]
  2. That bite brought it to 7-6, in Aziraphale’s favour; it was an 8-8 draw when they made the Arrangement and stopped all that. [ ▲ ]
  3. A discussion of Heaven and Hell’s attitudes towards sex and consent may be useful here, but as those attitudes differ dramatically from the attitudes of humans—at least, decent humans—some readers may wish to skip it, or at least to face it with a cautious attitude and a good cup of tea, or other comfort object, at the ready.

In brief, neither Heaven nor Hell placed much stock in the idea of consent. Heaven, in particular, was of the opinion that one should martyr oneself rather than submit to any sort of “immoral” sex, that is, any sex outside the confines of heterosexual marriage (or perhaps concubinage). Some female saints had been rescued from marriages not of their choosing, but generally this was because the prospective husband was of the wrong religion, not simply because the girl couldn’t stand the thought of being near him.

Essentially, Heaven’s view of sexual morality consisted of a series of rules, mostly in the form of “thou shalt not”s, and very few of those rules had anything to do with consent. Concepts such as “marital rape” and “age of consent” were entirely human in design, and few angels put much stock in them.

Hell, taking their cues as always from Heaven, took that same series of rules as a checklist to break. Ironically, this meant that they put a bit _more_ emphasis on consent than their angelic counterparts, as it was always preferable that a target be complicit in their own damnation. Demons were at least as likely to encourage adultery, casual sex, and homosexuality as they were to encourage rape. Crowley certainly had never encouraged it. He always claimed to prefer the subtler sins.

Both Aziraphale and Crowley had prevented a considerable number of rapes, due to the enormous amount of time they’d had to end up in the right place, but in most cases were unable to put it in their reports to their superiors. Demons did nonconsensual things to one another and to the damned with some regularity, but Crowley had always managed to avoid attending those sorts of parties.

Essentially, by getting into bed with Crowley and entering the vulnerable state of sleep, Aziraphale’s former employers would have considered him to have de facto consented to anything that was to follow. Crowley’s former superiors would have wondered why he wasn’t simply getting on with it, and perhaps commended him on the creativity of the “sex doesn’t automatically happen just because you’re in a bed together” line. Fortunately, neither group was able to watch thanks to Adam. [ ▲ ]


	7. In Which Connections Are Formed and Strained

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: Discussion of SA in this chapter. (There's no actual depiction, and there won't be any in this story.)

Evelyn had reached the limits of her ability to investigate the mystery that was increasingly obsessing her, and she was no closer to finding the child she had lost, if it ever existed in the first place.

No hospital or adoption agency that worked in London had any record of her. Microfiche archives of eleven-year-old papers said nothing about a woman giving birth and then wandering out of the hospital in a fugue state or anything. The therapist she saw (just the once) confirmed that it didn't sound like a typical delusion. She even tried dropping hints to a few of her shadier clients that she might know someone looking to sell a baby, and still hadn't found any solid leads.

She needed help, and for a solid twenty years, if you were a sex worker in Soho who needed help, you went to Marge. Nobody gave half a damn about sex workers besides other sex workers, and Marge had been a fixture of the scene for longer than anyone. She always had condoms, tea, advice, an available shower, a shoulder to cry on, help getting away from a pimp or a bad client, mediation between competitors, and anything else a working girl (or boy) might need. People paid her back when they could, but she'd done a brisk enough trade in her younger days that she could spare the cash, and very shrewdly diversified her income as she aged.

Evelyn would have contacted her ages ago if it wasn't for the fact that just a few weeks prior Marge had retired and moved out of the city with an odd man who smelled of cheap tobacco and looked like a tree stump. Evelyn met him at Marge’s going-away party. He’d spent most of it calling them all “hoors” and asking odd questions about nipples, but Marge seemed genuinely happy with him, despite the fact that it wasn’t until she announced that the working name “Madame Tracy” was now up for grabs that he seemed to realize that wasn’t her real name.

Anyway, there had been a mostly-unspoken consensus that nobody would bother Marge in her retirement—other people were already stepping up to fill her previous roles—and Evelyn was loath to be the one to break it. But she was out of options, and Marge had given all the old-timers (which included Evelyn; over a decade on the job was definitely an old-timer, for a sex worker) her new phone number.

Marge probably wouldn’t be able to help, of course. How could she possibly be expected to? But she always had before, so Evelyn called her anyway.

“Potts-Shadwell residence, Marge speaking,” said the familiar voice on the other end of the line.

“Hi, Marge,” Evelyn said, and quite unexpectedly burst into tears. It was the first time she’d cried in ages, but she couldn't seem to stop.

“Evelyn Miller, is that you?” Marge asked. “Oh, darling, what’s the matter?”

The story poured out of her along with the tears: the sudden appearance of the memory, all the weeks of dead ends, all the effort she’d poured into this mad quest.

“It’s not as though I even want a child,” she finished, sniffing a final time. “I’ve  _ never _ wanted children. But if I have one, if I made him and then just turned him loose with no help at all… I could have had an abortion, but I  _ didn’t _ , I made a person and then I  _ lost _ him like a handbag.”

“You’re sure it was a him?” Marge asked. She’d made appropriate comforting and shocked noises throughout Evelyn’s story, but this was the first question she’d asked.

“I think it was,” Evelyn said. “I don’t know for sure, but I think it was a boy and I think it was eleven years ago.”

“Hm.” Marge may no longer have been Madame Tracy and may have lost all clear memory of the Apocalypse, but she was still psychically sensitive enough that she’d once managed to fit an entire angel into her consciousness, and although she may not have been intelligent in the strictest sense, she was canny. She knew there was a foggy patch in her memory, some very strange events that had tied her indelibly to Shadwell and him to her, something extraordinary and terrifying and possibly wonderful. She was rather certain, peering through the fog of memory and ignoring the gentle suggestions that she look elsewhere, that an eleven-year-old boy with hair as golden as Evelyn’s had been involved.

“It may be nothing,” Marge said, “but I think I may have an idea. Sit tight, dear, and let me make a call. I’ll let you know if it doesn’t turn anything up, and then we’ll figure out what to do next.”

When Evelyn had thanked her and they’d said their farewells, Marge hung up the kitchen phone and went into the drawing room. Shadwell had taken more or less permanent residence in an easy chair there, where he spent most of his time muttering darkly about the probable occult entanglements of various employees of the BBC.

“Dear,” she said, “do you recall your army getting some sort of job perhaps a week before you retired? From a, er, southern pansy, I think you said?”

Shadwell grunted an affirmative, and soon Marge had a phone number for the aforementioned pansy. She left a message on his ansaphone, and called Evelyn back to tell her they’d have to be patient but she should know whether her hunch had panned out soon. Marge had a vague notion that there might have been someone else involved, another number Shadwell might have, but that thought was accompanied by the mental image of a car on fire, so she decided to leave it be.

“Can you afford to take a bit of time off, dear?” she asked Evelyn. “We haven’t had any visitors yet. It might be nice for you to get out of London for a bit, clear your head.”

“May as well,” Evelyn said. “I’ve been off my game with my clients lately anyway. Too distracted, you know.”

They made the arrangements, and Marge went to begin preparing Mr. S for the arrival of a painted Jezebel in their bungalow.

  
  


Harrison’s position in Hell had never been quite so complex. In theory, he was still:

  1. In trouble for his role in the botched Apocalypse.
  2. Being rewarded for his role in the angel’s Fall.
  3. Working for Crowley.

The first two more or less canceled one another out, as long as he kept his head down. As for the third, no one was quite sure what to make of Crowley’s sudden severing from Hell. It was  _ possible _ that it was part of a plan to recruit the former angel, but…

Well, nobody wanted to say it, but nobody actually  _ wanted _ to be in Hell. Even the demons who were most enthusiastic about the opportunity to torture others would rather not be tortured themselves, and just being in Hell was painful. One could become accustomed to rivers of fire and such, but that didn’t mean they became pleasant, and there was only one being in Hell who was powerful enough that he was never tortured by anyone else.

Was Crowley even a demon any longer? If he wasn’t, was he still Harrison’s boss? Harrison did his best to stay well out of the way while more important entities debated—well, mostly the first question, but if they settled it they were sure to get to the second one eventually.

No pun intended, it was pandemonium. Angels had Fallen before, but no demon had ever… did they call it Risen? It wasn’t as if Crowley’d been taken back by Heaven, at least not as far as anyone could tell. Had he been enslaved by the Antichrist, or freed by him? Had he been turned into a human? If he wasn’t a human or an angel or a demon, what was he? Those were pretty much the options, since no one could think of any way he could have become a personification like the Horsepeople.

Because this was Hell, it was less of a philosophical debate than a battle. Hastur led the faction that claimed that whatever Crowley was, he was certainly a traitor and somehow needed to be dealt with; Mammon advocated waiting for some sort of contact; Beelzebub thought this might be an opportunity to give the whole Apocalypse thing another go, if the Antichrist was recruiting his own army of the damned. Since Satan hadn’t yet made his opinion known, members of these factions were currently engaged in tearing one another to pieces with enough enthusiasm that it actually stood out against the usual background level of violence in Hell.

Harrison did his best to keep well out of it. He’d once heard Crowley describe himself as “a wiler, not a fighter,” and although the lesser demon wasn’t entirely certain what that meant, he was quite sure it described him as well as his boss.

Finding an out-of-the-way spot in Hell was extremely unpleasant, since the less heavily trafficked areas were the most painful. It was still better than what they’d been doing to him before, though, so he sat in the shallows of a fiery lake, determined to wait it out.

It was probably the combination of pain and boredom that gave him one of the strangest ideas that had ever crossed his mind, even when he’d been trying to keep up with Crowley. At first he tried to dismiss it; it could get him into more trouble with the senior devils than he’d ever been in, if anyone caught him doing it. But the idea kept circling in his mind, and how could anybody catch him at it, really?

A wary glance around showed that there was no one nearby. Shaking in terror, Harrison dredged up memories of humans he’d seen while he’d been on earth and folded his hands together.

“Antichrist—er, Adam,” he prayed quietly, “I don’t know if you’re listening, but if there’s any chance you could use another demon, I’d love a new job. Crowley might be willing to vouch for me. Name’s Harrison. There’s...there’s probably plenty of volunteers down here, if you’d like to start putting together your own army or whatever it would be. Um. Amen.”

Harrison unfolded his hands and opened his eyes, feeling silly. Then he got a response.   
  


Occult entities, even those who had made as much of a habit of sleeping as Crowley, did not have the same sorts of circadian rhythms as humans. He and Aziraphale had fallen asleep in the mid-morning, only a few hours after Crowley woke up, but neither of them stirred until late afternoon.

Aziraphale woke first. He felt so deliciously comfortable, covered by a warm blanket and a cool arm, but there was something missing, a strange sort of emptiness—

Oh. Right. He had Fallen, and now he was lying in bed with a… well, if not a demon any longer, another Fallen angel, at least. Both were wearing full pyjamas, Aziraphale’s of tartan flannel and Crowley’s of black silk, but it was still uncomfortably intimate, even if most of the discomfort came from his nagging feeling that it  _ ought _ to feel uncomfortable.

They had slept together—shared a bed—lain down together. There seemed to be no way to describe it that wasn’t also an innuendo. Aziraphale realized that at some point during the night he’d unconsciously manifested genitals for himself, and felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him. He hadn’t even known that could happen by accident.

And Heaven couldn’t see them, couldn’t punish them, and it was wonderful—but if this was nearly the first thing he did as soon as he wasn’t being watched, then they had been right about him, he had deserved to Fall.

Strange how thinking of Heaven, nominally the fount of all joy, sucked the happiness right out of him. Crowley’s arm suddenly felt less like comfort and more like a trap, holding him here, holding him  _ down _ in what was surely a bed of sin.

Crowley had almost certainly engaged in sexual intercourse in this bed, Aziraphale realized. What debaucheries had happened here? What innocents had he tempted into it?

Had he told  _ them _ that sleeping in the same bed didn’t necessarily lead to sex? Was that a standard piece of the seduction, easing you into it by degrees so that before you knew it you were… You were…

Aziraphale could think of a lot of possible ends to that sentence, and nearly all of them were far more appealing than they should have been. His weakness disgusted him. He had to get out.

He didn’t want to wake Crowley, though. He’d asked so much of him over the last few days, and didn’t want to disturb him just because he was suddenly panicking about being in Crowley’s bed. Yes, he was aware that there were some inconsistencies in his train of thought there, but he could address them once he’d gotten loose.

A sleepy sort of snuffling noise came from behind him, and he froze.

“Morning, ang—Zira,” Crowley said, his voice thick with sleep. “Or afternoon, I guess. Evening? Whatever.”

“Crowley, please let go of me,” Aziraphale exhaled in a rush, and what if he  _ didn’t _ , what if…

“Sorry, was I hurting you?” Crowley asked, immediately letting go. Aziraphale flung himself out of bed, barely managing to avoid landing in a heap on the floor. He scooted back to sit with his back against the wall.

“No, I… no,” he said, clutching at his own elbows and trying to calm his breathing. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Bad dream?” Crowley guessed, sitting up. He looked strangely vulnerable with his hair mussed and his glasses off. One of the middle buttons of his pyjama top had come undone, and Aziraphale could see a sliver of pale skin through it. He looked down at his own arms instead.

“No, I just…” Make an excuse or tell the truth? Crowley had been astonishingly honest with him. “I’m sorry, my dear. I’m afraid I realized I was in a demon’s bed—well, not a demon any longer, but you know what I mean—and had a bit of a disproportionate reaction.”

“Right.” Crowley cleared his throat. “I do clean the sheets, you know. And I haven’t exactly had the time to have anyone over since the whole Antichrist business started, if that helps at all.”

Aziraphale nodded. He told himself that it didn’t  _ matter _ what Crowley had done; he  _ had  _ to do it, would literally have been dragged to Hell if he hadn’t done his job, and he probably kept the, the despoiling of virgins and all to a minimum, right? And he would have found the ones who were looking to be tempted  _ anyway _ , he wouldn’t have… he wouldn’t have…

“Can you tell me why you can’t look at me?” Crowley asked.

“Sorry,” Aziraphale said, forcing himself to look at the dem—at Crowley’s worried face. “You know I don’t like to think about some of the less savoury aspects of your job—of your former job, rather—and I suppose I suddenly realized that this bed was involved in some of them.”

“Right.” Crowley hesitated. “So, the thing is, I can’t tell whether you’re upset about what’s actually happened in this bed, meaning good times with people who knew what they were doing and were glad to be doing it, or if you’re imagining something a lot more sinister.”

“Mostly the second one,” Aziraphale said, looking away again. It was reassuring to know that Crowley had kept the less savoury parts of his sex life out of this apartment, at least, but Aziraphale’s stomach still felt tight and sick.

“Okay.” Crowley took a deep breath. “Okay. This isn’t something we ever talked about, partly because I know that Upstairs pretty much lumps together anything non-marital, but for fuck’s sake, Zira, I’m not a rapist. We’ve run into each other in cities that were being sacked. Did I  _ look _ like I wanted to join in? I’ve never tempted anyone into bed with stronger measures than I’ve used to tempt you into dinner. I was a rubbish demon, alright? You know what they do to rubbish demons in Hell?”

He got out of bed on the other side and snapped his fingers, changing his pyjamas for a suit and sunglasses and taming his hair in an instant.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. He searched for more words, but there was nothing there, nothing. Of course he would’ve known, if he’d thought. Crowley ruined days (and talked a big game about cumulative effects) and sometimes he ended lives when he had to, but he didn’t ruin lives. And of course he’d seen Crowley’s fear when he knew he had to head back to Hell for a while, and the way the demon was so  _ absent _ when he got back, like he’d had to turn a part of himself off to get through it, but he always seemed to bounce back, and inquiring seemed… impolite.

He’d never asked what they  _ did _ to him down there. He’d never wanted to know.

“It’s not your fault,” Crowley said, not looking at Aziraphale. “I wouldn’t trust me either. I’m going to take a drive, you… do whatever.”

“Crowley—”

“I know you shouldn’t be alone right now,” Crowley said. “I’m sorry. I’ll be back.”

And then he was gone.

  
  


In Heaven, time was neither linear nor measurable; like most things in Heaven, it was ineffable. This did not prevent Francis from spending quite a lot of it with Malkiel. He found that he liked the angel; she was eccentric, with opinions on a good number of topics that weren’t exactly  _ forbidden _ but certainly weren’t popular among the Host, like gender and the worth of individual humans. She didn’t mind coming into the human-predominated area of Heaven to see him, and had even helped him weed his garden (with considerably more enthusiasm than skill, but since the plants were ethereal, no harm was done.)

Aziraphale had visited Francis rarely, whenever he was called back to Heaven by discorporation or business, and tried to bring him up to date on the state of the Earth since he’d left, helped him put into context glimpses caught through Heavenly windows or on the occasions he went down to perform miracles. Malkiel knew next to nothing of the Earth, but was eager to learn from him, wanted to know all about his life, the ordinary as well as the saintly aspects. She had laughed at his memories of amusement, all but wept at his memories of sorrow.

When he’d been alive, if one friend had found him just as another passed, Francis would have thanked the saints and angels for sending them to him. Heaven was almost as full of ironies as it was of angels.

“So you knew about his, er, Arrangement?” Malkiel asked. Most of their conversation was about Earth and life and Heaven, but every now and then it would inexorably drift back to Aziraphale.

“I participated in it, I suppose,” Francis admitted. “I try to keep an eye on my Brothers on Earth, when I can, and I discovered a group that was running a school in a building that was, well, on the verge of falling apart. They refused to have it fixed, saw it as a breach of the vow of poverty.”

“Didn’t you say you fixed churches, when you were alive?” Malkiel asked with a frown.

“Yes, and I certainly didn’t put  _ children _ in buildings that could have collapsed on their heads! But I couldn’t get approval to miracle the building solid again, or to appear to one of the Brothers, so I asked Aziraphale for help.” Francis sighed. “He asked me if it would be alright if one or two of the friars were non-fatally wounded, as long as the children were safe.”

“What?” Malkiel asked, shocked.

“I said yes, and I suppose he had that demon—Crowley—collapse the building while there were only a few people inside, and none of the children. No one died, as promised, and in the end they built a much sturdier building. A few years later, Aziraphale came to me for help. He told me about the Arrangement, and about trying to keep the good and bad influences on the Antichrist equal. I helped with that.” He laughed humorlessly. “I don’t know whether saints can Fall, or be un-sainted. I didn’t actually  _ consort _ with the demon, in any case. I was the gardener and she was the nanny, and we kept well apart from one another. In the end, it turned out we were influencing the wrong child entirely. But I suppose things worked out for the best.”

“No one seems quite certain whether they did or not,” Malkiel said. “In any case, I’m glad you didn’t....I’m glad you’re still here, even if Aziraphale...” She looked conflicted, as if afraid to speak her mind.

“When I was alive, I tried my best to love my enemies,” he told Malkiel. “Now that I and they have passed, I am meant to be glad to think of them suffering in Hell. It is a difficult contradiction. I think perhaps Aziraphale found it so as well, feeling the need to ‘love the sinner and hate the sin,’ as they say, in all cases but the demon’s.”

“It is hard, sometimes,” Malkiel said. “To feel love for all Creation, and yet to rejoice at the suffering of the damned. Not all the tasks set to us by the Lord are easy.”

“Perhaps that is why the knowledge of good and evil is such a curse,” Francis mused.

They sat together in silence for a while. Francis wished he could have offered her something to eat or drink; the consumption of food had been at the centre of so much of social life, when he was alive. Now he felt as though he didn’t know where to put his hands.

“I rejoiced, when Lucifer and his legions Fell,” Malkiel said. “I could not rejoice when we watched Aziraphale.”

“Circumstances and perspectives change. When I was alive, I eschewed Earthly pleasures, and inspired others to do the same,” Francis said. “Now that I no longer have the chance, I wonder—not whether I should have sinned more, you understand, but—perhaps I could have given more time to comfort, to good foods and good wines in moderation, to bring those memories with me. Perhaps I could have married, and had the company of my love in Heaven. And even now, the memory of me inspires others to give up those things. Should there be regret, in Heaven?”

“And now we’re barred from Earth, by the whims of a child,” Malkiel said. “I don’t understand it. He could have banned only us, and increased the numbers of the damned, or banned only Hell, so that we could save more, but why both?”

“He is alive,” Francis said. “And more, he is a child. He thinks of life, not of what comes after. And perhaps even if their chance of Heaven may suffer, for the duration of their lives, the humans are better off without us.”

“But the fleeting pleasures of the Earth cannot equal eternal torment,” Malkiel objected.

“Well, perhaps he’ll change that too. He is the crown prince of Hell,” Francis said. “Maybe he plans to ease its torments.”

“I wonder if the Lord would allow that,” Malkiel said. “I know many among the angels would be outraged.”

“But not you?”

“No… not me, I don’t think. And I don’t know whether that’s sin or virtue.” Malkiel’s face furrowed. “Why don’t I know?”

“I think the only angels I’ve ever heard express doubt are you and Aziraphale,” Francis said with a chuckle. “He used to—”

“Don’t say that,” Malkiel said. “Please. I don’t… I don’t want to…”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean to imply—” Francis reached out to touch her arm, and she turned towards him, burying her ethereal head against his shoulder as though she was in tears. He hesitantly embraced her, not certain whether to feel blasphemous or blessed.

“I wish he hadn’t Fallen,” Malkiel said. “I wish, I wish that things were different. How can I wish that things were different? Am I going to Fall too?”

“A human wouldn’t be damned for wishing better for their friends,” Francis said. “It would be cruel to hold you to a different standard.”

“It can’t be cruel,” Malkiel said, still speaking against his shoulder. In life, he would have gently disentangled himself, led the crying woman to one of the Sisters for more appropriate comfort, but where could he possibly send Malkiel? And holding her certainly didn’t feel like a burden. “We are held to another standard. Our behavior and even our thoughts must always be pure, because we cannot Repent.”

“Of course,” Francis said, chastened. To Repent and be redeemed, that was a gift given to man by the Son. Angels had no such path to forgiveness. “I’m sorry.”

“The thought is as bad as the deed, for us,” Malkiel said. “Weakness is as bad as ill intent. And so, since I’ve already thought it, to act on my weakness can’t make things any worse, can it?”

And she kissed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the aaaaaangst! The story Francis tells Malkiel is loosely based on a true story my ex-Catholic girlfriend told me, although weirdly enough her version didn't involve any direct intervention from saints or demons.


	8. In Which Truths Are Revealed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: discussion of SA. (I promise I'm not going to be putting that in every chapter from here out or anything, but it'll come up.)
> 
> On a less serious note, also contains my take on Genesis 3:14 and Crowley's snakeskin shoes.

At first, Crowley just drove in a random direction, fast. It was good, being in the Bentley. It was like an extra layer of skin around him, a sort of exoskeleton. It got him through the Apocalypse, it could get him through this.

It wasn’t as if he spent a lot of time thinking about Hell and what they did to him there. He didn’t _ avoid _ thinking about it, either; he just lived his life, or existed his existence or whatever, and it wasn’t relevant. Most of the time. Demons hadn’t invented rape—humans had done that—but it was a pretty common punishment in Hell. Didn’t meet all your quotas? Didn’t show proper respect? Didn’t jump at the chance to _ punish _ someone else? They made it as public, humiliating, and painful as possible, and they did it to him every century or so.

And then Aziraphale went and accused _ him _ of—no, not accused. Assumed. He took it as a matter of fact. Why shouldn’t he? Crowley had been a demon, too. Even now, he wanted to work out his frustration by turning all the traffic lights at an intersection red, or making a talk radio host stub his toe right before he went on air so that he’d be _ extra _ irritable, or making sure each container of raspberries at the grocer’s had a moldy one hiding in the middle. Something nearly harmless in itself, but that would create an aura of low-grade evil that he’d be able to feel spreading from its epicenter as if he’d thrown a rock into a pond. But that would break Adam’s rule against messing people about.

He pressed harder on the accelerator, frustrated. He’d done terrible things without a whit of guilt, but not the sorts of terrible things Aziraphale had accused him of. Of course Aziraphale wouldn’t have seen, wouldn’t have understood the difference. And really, everything that happened to humans in Hell was Crowley’s fault, wasn’t it, because if he hadn’t gotten Eve to eat that damn apple in the first place…

It hadn’t been hard, tempting Eve. He’d asked if she really, truly wanted to go forever without knowing the taste of the apple, with no idea what knowledge it contained. It was easy enough to say “I won’t eat it today,” but did she really want to not eat it _ forever _?

He didn’t know what she’d said to Adam—the original Adam—to convince him, because she’d thrown a rock at Crowley as soon as she realized what she’d done, so he’d slithered off. And now he had to spend eternity with the tender scales of his snake-stomach in the dust, even if he had learned to disguise it as something more stylish.

How much of his anger right now was at Aziraphale and how much was at himself? It was mixed together too thoroughly to be separated out. Damn it all, he hadn’t _ wanted _ to leave the newly-Fallen angel alone again. He just couldn’t spend another minute with someone who thought he was a monster, just then. Not that sort of monster.

Crowley steered the Bentley towards his and Aziraphale’s favorite take-out sushi place, and placed an order without touching his phone. They’d make this right, somehow. Crowley had gotten too close, that was all. He and Aziraphale had gone from enemies to associates to friends, and he’d thought they could take some step past that, and he’d been wrong. He’d just take a step back, put a few layers of armour back up, and things would be okay again.

Well, first he’d have to sit through what was sure to be an _ excruciating _ apology from Aziraphale, but after that things would be alright.

He got home with the sushi about an hour after he’d left. Aziraphale was still there, and had put a few layers of armour back on as well: white shirt, tartan waistcoat, tweed trousers and jacket. He leapt up from the couch when Crowley entered, relief and apology written boldly on his face.

“Glad to see you haven’t been spoiling my plants while I’ve been gone,” Crowley said. “Sit, sit, I’ve got sushi. I think I’ve got a bottle of sake somewhere, too—”

“Crowley, I’m so—”

“—so we can make a real night of it, if you like,” Crowley carried on. “Let’s see, two salmon rolls, a tuna roll, spider roll just because I know you hate them and I can eat it all—”

“I _ am _ sorry, Crowley. Truly. And if eating sushi and not talking about it is what you need, that’s what we’ll do.”

Crowley blinked. He’d been expecting something considerably more extensive, probably continuing until he claimed to have forgiven Aziraphale (or possibly until he’d claimed to be incapable of forgiveness enough times that it turned into a joke).

“Really?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Aziraphale said earnestly. “You were so good about asking what I needed earlier, my dear—and giving suggestions, although I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer in that department—how could I not do the same?”

“Really now,” Crowley said. “And if I said what I needed was for you to join me on a cocaine bender?”

“I’d stay here and keep an eye on you if you wanted, I suppose,” Aziraphale said. “You’re not going to guilt me into doing hard drugs, my dear. I really have no interest.”

“Doesn’t go well with sushi anyway,” Crowley invented.

“I imagine it could mix with wasabi unpleasantly,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley stared at him, and burst out laughing.

“I said I didn’t want to do it, not that I didn’t know how it’s done,” Aziraphale said primly.

They settled in with the sushi and the sake soon after that. Crowley hadn’t been sure how close to Aziraphale to sit—before the Apocalypse they’d generally kept a good amount of elbow room between them, and maybe that would be best, but after how they’d spent the night, would that seem like a rejection? Remembering his resolution to let things get back to normal, he determinedly sat on the opposite edge of the couch from Aziraphale.

“Would you mind if I sat a bit closer to you, my dear?” the former angel asked, as casually as he’d ask for the soy sauce.

Crowley gaped at him.

“It’s fine if you’d prefer I didn’t,” Aziraphale continued, starting to look less self-assured. “I know I made a terrible mess of things when we woke up. But before that, it was lovely. I just wanted you to know that I’d like to do more of that sort of thing, if I haven’t ruined things completely. I think I’ve wanted to for rather a while, actually.”

“I’ve always wanted to,” Crowley admitted, feeling his carefully rebuilt armour crumble around him. “But I couldn’t risk making you Fall.”

“No fear of that now,” Aziraphale said, only a little wistfully. “I don’t think there’s anything stopping us now, it’s only—we don’t know where we’re going, and we keep getting in our own way.”

Crowley opened his mouth to retort that he knew _ perfectly well _ where they were going, thank you, and closed it. He’d had relationships with people of all genders for thousands of years: heterari, concubi and concubae, mistresses, “intimate friends” with a meaningfully raised eyebrow, fuckbuddies. They’d all been pleasant, friendly and comfortable and not at all exclusive or particularly romantic but not without affection. He’d contributed to their finances during the times when such a thing was necessary and expected, and quietly mourned them when they died or he had to move on permanently, for whatever reason. Then he’d gotten on with things. He’d never tried to look any of them up in Hell, certainly.

But he’d never had, either in the strict sense of the word or in modern parlance, a _ partner _. That was what he wanted with Aziraphale, regardless of whether sex ever entered the equation at all; for them to share their lives, not by filling each other in whenever they happened to meet but by living them together.

He wanted them to know each other completely, which was a terrifying prospect because he already knew himself completely, and he could only hope that Aziraphale would like the bits of him that he kept tucked out of the way most of the time—the mental as well as the physical.

“I think you might be right,” he said. “What do you suppose we should do about it?”

“I’m not certain there’s anything for it but to keep muddling through, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “Although perhaps at some point we should discuss where it is that we’d like to end up. I’ve read that honesty and communication are rather essential.”

“Oh, for G—for fuck’s sake,” Crowley groaned, swiping a piece of Aziraphale’s share of the salmon roll. “You’ve been at the human relationship books, haven’t you?”

“That’s one thing we should probably discuss,” Aziraphale said, blatantly stealing a piece of tuna right back.

“Human relationship books? Because let me tell you, half the ‘self-help’ industry is in Downstairs’ pocket—”

“No, I meant the, er.” He blushed deeply. “The potential for a, well, physical expression of… ah… whatever it is that we intend to be doing.”

Crowley attempted to parse this sentence, then went back through what he’d said to try to figure out what part of it could possibly have brought it up. Then he choked on his stolen salmon.

It wasn’t that he’d been entirely certain that Aziraphale wouldn’t want to have sex. He’d been rather hopeful on the subject, actually. He’d just assumed that _ he _ would have to be the one to indirectly bring up the subject, gauge a response, gradually increase the physical contact, perhaps make some subtle suggestions about really getting the full experience of the human body. He’d expected perhaps a decade of campaigning before he knew with any degree of confidence whether sex was on the table (or whatever other surface might be convenient).

He certainly hadn’t expected Aziraphale to _ casually bring it up over dinner _.

“Are you quite alright, my dear?” Aziraphale asked, concerned. “I didn’t think you would be that opposed to the idea.”

“Not opposed,” Crowley said quickly. “Very not opposed. Just surprised that you were the one to bring it up.”

“I’m not certain how I feel about it,” Aziraphale said. “But that seems to me an excellent reason to try it. Ah, perhaps a bit at a time, though? I’ve been given to believe that there’s a sort of progression of activities.”

He looked at Crowley expectantly, as if Crowley was some sort of expert in gradually increasing one’s level of physical intimacy with an inexperienced partner, which was laughable. He didn’t think he’d been with a virgin since… well, depending on how you defined the term and how far Lilith and Adam had gotten before their row, it might have been never. It had always seemed a bit pointless, pairing up with an amateur when there were enthusiastic experts all over the place.

But the thought of teaching Aziraphale, helping him discover what he liked, discovering it along with him… the idea of being the first one to see the former angel panting and dishevelled, the one to show him that it was worth the effort… that didn’t seem pointless at all. Actually it got Crowley hard as a rock just thinking about it, which probably was not the ideal state in which to begin easing one’s partner into things.

“It’s not exactly a set formula,” he said, trying to sound cool and collected and knowledgeable. “It’s about what feels right to you. But these days people generally start with kissing.”

“Perhaps we should finish the sushi first,” Aziraphale said with a frown. “That is, if you’d like to at all. I shouldn’t like to presume.”

“A cup of sake, a salmon roll, and thou,” Crowley misquoted, and leaned in to kiss Aziraphale before he could protest the mangling of Khayyám—just a gentle press of lips to lips, the sort of thing that could pass for a handshake in France, but with a sense of intent and _ impendingness _ like the air before a thunderstorm. It hung heavy in the air between them when he pulled back to gauge the former angel’s reaction.

Aziraphale licked his lips.

“I always wondered what they were on about,” he said quietly. “All the books, you know, and all the foolish things they do.”

“Come to any conclusions?” Crowley asked.

“O Love! And this immortalizing kiss,” Aziraphale quoted, and Crowley shuddered to hear the word they’d both avoided so far. “To all of us the thought of heaven is dear— Why not be sure of it and make it here?”

“Blasssssssssphemy,” Crowley hissed, feeling entirely too much considering all they’d done was touch lips.

“I’ve Fallen, my dear. I’m entitled,” Aziraphale reminded him, and kissed him again.

They kissed for quite some time, twisting towards one another on the couch like a couple of human teenagers. Crowley emphatically did _ not _ pull Aziraphale onto his lap or push him back against the armrest or make a grab for anywhere particularly erogenous. Easing into it, they were easing into it, that was what Aziraphale wanted and Crowley could do it, really, even if the surprised little gasps and the wet sliding noises and the taste of immortality under the sushi and sake in Aziraphale’s mouth were driving him entirely mad. He kissed a trail down the side of Aziraphale’s neck as a compromise, and made the delicious discovery that adding little nips and nibbles made the former angel gasp and shudder and clutch at him, squirming like his trousers were feeling just as confining as Crowley’s.

“Stop,” Aziraphale gasped, although he didn’t at all sound like he meant it. “Stop, stop.”

Crowley pulled away.

“Alright there, Zira?” he asked. The former angel was flushed and panting, and still holding onto Crowley’s shoulders like he couldn’t bear to let go, so hopefully Crowley hadn’t mucked things up too badly.

“It’s… it’s just a lot,” Aziraphale said. “It all feels so good and so strange, and then when you started biting my neck I remembered… you know. Back when we used to fight.”

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Crowley said. He did remember. In the bad old pre-Arrangement days, when they frequently came to blows, Aziraphale had always been able to outclass him with any kind of weaponry; Crowley had to rely on his wits, his speed, and his fangs. There had been at least half a dozen times when the last thing Aziraphale felt before discorporating was Crowley’s teeth in his neck. Of course that would put a bit of a different spin on love bites. “I won’t do it again.”

“No,” Aziraphale said quickly. “That is—I don’t know. You don’t have to _ never _ do it again.”

“Really, I don’t mind,” Crowley said. “There’s plenty of other things we can do, believe me. Nobody likes them all.” He did enjoy biting quite a bit, but honestly, if all Aziraphale ever wanted to do was cuddle, that would be fine; keeping his teeth to himself was hardly a sacrifice. It was possible, he reflected, that he was turning into a sap.

“It would make sense if I didn’t like it,” Aziraphale said, sounding oddly unsure. “Right? Why would I want to be reminded of times when you…” He trailed off.

Crowley considered Aziraphale’s flushed face.

“It would also be fine if you _ did _ like it,” he said cautiously. “It doesn’t have to make sense. None of it makes sense, really, wanting to stick your mouths together and all. It’s alright to like something that seems… counterintuitive.”

“I think I may have liked it rather a lot,” Aziraphale confessed, not looking Crowley in the eye.

“Oh, we are going to have _ so _ much fun,” Crowley said gleefully. He almost wanted to pinch himself, but if he was dreaming, he certainly didn’t want to wake up. Not only did he get to stay on Earth, not only did he get to be with Aziraphale, not only did he maybe (and it was starting to look probable) get to have sex with Aziraphale, but it looked like that sex might be _ kinky_.1 He sort of wanted to cackle demonically, but that probably would have put a damper on the proceedings.

“Perhaps for tonight we could just stick with kissing?” Aziraphale suggested. “If that wouldn’t be too dull for you.”

“You know,” Crowley said thoughtfully, “If I thought you were going to be kissing other people, I’d tell you not to say things like that, because it’s fine to go at your own pace and anyone who tries to rush you is being a bastard. But I’m planning to keep you all to myself, so I’ll just say no, it wouldn’t be dull in the least.”

“Are you now?” Aziraphale asked. “Does that go both ways, my dear?”

“Of course—” Crowley started to say, and stopped. “Alright, I’ll admit that if you end up not wanting to have sex at all, I might still want to be able to, but let’s sort ourselves out first and then worry about other people.”

“We _ are _ rather good at making Arrangements,” Aziraphale said. “I’m sure we’ll work it out.”

“By the way, I know you’re new to this whole thing, but this? This isn’t kissing,” Crowley teased. “This is talking.”

“Oh, of course. Silly me,” Aziraphale said, and leaned in to rectify his error.

  
  


Back in Aziraphale’s bookshop, the light on the ansaphone—a new purchase Crowley had talked him into by emphasizing their dual use as message takers and home security—blinked placidly. The former Madame Tracy’s message was just going to have to wait a little while longer. When events like this occur in fiction, it is called “dramatic irony.” When they occur in real life, it is often referred to as “a damned nuisance,” or by the more Zen, “just how life goes sometimes.” Generally, such things did not occur in the life of the Antichrist, who despite his resolution not to meddle couldn’t help but incline events to come out in his favour. But in this case, the delay in his immediate goal—finding his birth mother—contributed significantly to a much larger and farther-reaching goal, one that he did not yet realize he had.

  
  


“I've got it this time,” Pepper said as the four of Them lounged in the quarry, Adam occasionally tossing a stick for Dog. “The perfect way for you to use your powers.”

“I tol’ you I won't get rid of school,” Adam said warily. It was a Sunday, and Pepper’s suggestions on Sundays always seemed to revolve around avoiding Monday. “Most of it’s rot, but there's still some stuff tha’s important. Anyway, it wouldn’ be fair to Wensley.”

“I know, I know,” Pepper said. “Gotta have school, I get it. _ But _, since most of it's rot anyways, what if it was only four days a week? An’ it could've jus’ always been like that. Three days off every week.”

Adam turned the idea over in his mind. The others knew he didn't want to use his powers all the time, but he did still use them _ sometimes _, and he thought it was only fair to let them make suggestions. As far as he was concerned, they were the best representatives the rest of humanity could have.

“I don' think it'd work,” he finally said with regret. “I don’ think they'd get rid of just the rubbish bits. They'd prolly teach just as much rubbish and less of the important stuff, if school was only four days a week.”

Pepper sighed and flopped onto the ground.

“Could be just us, who only go four days,” Brian said. “Or we could just not go at all, an’ you could make it so we learn the important bits anyways.”

“That'd be messing with our heads,” Wensley reminded him. “He already said he won’t do that, and I don’t want him to.”

Adam nodded.

“We should jus’ each get a go, bein’ the anny-chris,” Brian muttered. “Isn't fair that it's only ever Adam.”

“Wouldn't be fair if it was jus’ us, either,” Adam retorted. “I'd have to give everyone a go, the teachers an’ Greasy Johnson an’ our _ mums—” _

The rest of the Them recoiled in horror at the thought. Adam sighed and kicked the ground.

“Could just get rid of all the mums,” Brian said.

“You don't want that, really,” Adam said. He tried not to think about his own mum too much, worried that he might start rearranging reality without meaning to if he dwelt on it, but sometimes he couldn't help it.

“Whassamatter with you, anyways?” Brian asked. “You're all… _ that _ way today.” Brian may not have had the vocabulary to express that sometimes Adam got into moods that were very unlike his old self, where his eyes looked ancient and the weight of everything he knew and everything he could do pressed down on his shoulders until his back nearly snapped, but he knew his friend well enough to notice 

“Anathema’s gonna have a baby,” Adam said, evading the question a bit. “‘s weird, isn’ it? Somebody we know, becoming a mum.”

The Them thought about this for a moment. Anathema was a grownup, but she was more of a _ person _ than most grownups they knew. She was a much more interesting conversationalist, for one thing, and never threatened to tell their parents on them, for another.

“I wonder if she’ll change all at once,” Brian said. “Jus’, first she’s Anathemar, an’ then poof! She’s a mum instead.”

“Mum’s aren’ all the same,” Pepper said. “_ My _ mum’s not much like other mums.”

“Yeah, but that’s ‘cause your gran lives with you too,” Brian argued. “So it’s like your gran’s your mum, an’ your mum’s your dad.”

The Them contemplated this for a moment.

“I don’t think it works like that,” Wensley said. “Mums and dads are still _ people. _ They’re just grownups, is all.”

“Maybe some of ‘em are,” Brian said stubbornly, “But not all of ‘em. I mean, look at Adam’s mum and dad. They’re just a mum an’ a dad, not _ people, _really. They only do mum and dad things, not people things.”

“Just—” Adam started, and the rest of the Them swung to stare at him. His voice sounded tight, almost as though he was holding back tears, which was unheard-of for Adam. “Just stop, will you?”

There was complete silence for a moment.

“Adam?” Pepper asked tentatively. “You know if you need help, even if ‘snot with end-of-the-world kinda stuff, we’d help you, right?”

Wensley and Brian nodded.

“I know. But it’s not… you can’t…” He took a deep breath. “I sorta… broke my parents.”

“Can’t you fix them?” Brian asked. Adam had mended Brian’s broken bicycle recently, although he’d told Brian he couldn’t just do that every time and not to keep breaking it. Brian told him he sounded like his dad, and he’d made _ that _ face for a moment.

“I don’t know how,” Adam said. “‘s like… you know how I told you the weather would start bein’ crummy sometimes, now that I’m not messin’ with it without thinkin’ about it?”

The Them nodded. Pepper and Brian had tried to talk him out of it, but Wensleydale had said a bunch of things about climates and fronts and, for some reason, butterflies until they’d been cowed into submission.

“Well, I wasn’ jus’ doin’ it to the weather,” Adam said. “I was doin’ it to my parents, too, and Sarah. I jus’ thought of them as a mum an’ a dad an’ a older sister, so mum got more an’ more mummish, an’ dad got more an’ more daddish, an’ Sarah got more an’ more older sisterish, an’ I don’t think they are quite _ people _ any more. Not really.”

The three children digested this silently for a moment. It wasn’t a thought they would have been able to grapple with just a year or so earlier in their lives, because to a young enough child, mums and dads and older sisters _ aren’t _ people. But they were all getting to the point where they understood that one day they would be grown-ups as well, and maybe even parents, and that they would still be people; and they were getting to the point where they could look at their parents and see that there were parts of them that didn’t revolve around their children, parts that were only for them.

“Adam,” Wensley said quietly, “What do you think of _ us _ as?”

“You’re my _ friends _,” Adam said desperately. “I never wanted you to be anythin’ but what you are, not ever. I promise. An’ even if you wanted to stop being my friends… well, I’m not sure what would’ve happened before, but if you want to stop being my friends now, I won’t stop you. You can, if you want.”

“Course we don’t want that,” Pepper scoffed. “An’ I’m sure your parents don’ mind—”

“I don’ think they _ can _ mind,” Adam said. “I think it’s too late for that. I think I started doin’ it when I was a _ baby _. An’ I don’ know how to fix it.”

“You can’t just sorta… undo it?” asked Wensley, who had the most experience of the four of them with computers, and was rather fond of the clean erasure of the backspace key.

“I can’ think of a way to, not without undoing everything that’s happened since I started,” Adam said. “Since I was a baby. They’d forget about me. An’ people would think they were mad, thinkin’ it was eleven years ago still.”

“Gosh,” Brian said. It summed up most of the Them’s feelings on the matter.

“I’ve been tryin’ to find my other mum,” Adam said. “Cause, remember in the film they said the Antichrist would be the son of the devil an’ a human woman? I was hopin’ maybe she’d know what to do. I’ve been tryin’ to find her, but no luck so far.”

“You’ll find her,” Pepper said confidently. “Or you’ll figure somethin’ else out. If it’s just a mum you need, there’s mums everywhere. Anathema’s gonna be a mum, you could ask her.”

“I prolly will,” Adam said. “Thanks, Pep. Oh! Speakin’ of askin’ people for things, I was thinkin’, remember how we played spies but it got too borin’? We should try playin’ secret agents instead.”

The children accepted this subject change with relief, and the rest of the Sunday afternoon proceeded on more normal lines. Adam managed to lose himself in the game for a while, and have just as much fun as he would have had a year prior. But when he went home, and his mum greeted him with a home-cooked dinner and a blank (now that he knew to look for the blankness) smile, it all came crashing down again.

  1. Many aspects of BDSM, and several other kinks, were invented by Crowley and Lilith very close to the dawn of time, and had spread from there through the rest of humanity. Other than Crowley and Aziraphale (who had read guiltily and fairly extensively on the subject), most angels and demons assumed that kink was a disguise for abuse—which of course it could be on occasion, but so could practically anything else. Crowley had managed to spin entirely consensual and mutually satisfactory sexual relationships into demonic activity for his reports by taking advantage of this misconception. [ ▲ ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale quotes (and Crowley intentionally misquotes) [Richard Le Gallienne’s translation of the _Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám_](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Rub%C3%A1iy%C3%A1t_of_Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m_\(Le_Gallienne\)), the most well-known line of which is "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou." I highly recommend reading it; it's a beautiful poem. I also think it would be particularly interesting to Aziraphale, because it's all about earthly pleasures and how wonderful they are, but legions of scholars since it was first written have tried to argue that no, those are all _metaphors_ for _spiritual_ things, which I personally think is absurd.


End file.
